Plakatstil - Poster Style, and how to do it.

Of all the art forms I've been exposed to over the last three years, this is the one I want to emulate the most.

'It's only posters, not real art' I hear you say. well, tell that to the 'real' artists who created stuff like this:

Poster for the London, Midland & Scottish Railway, by Norman Wilkinson.

'HMS Courageous in Dry Dock' by Charles Pears.

 'Cowes Week' by Kenneth Shoesmith

'Petergate, York' by Fred Taylor

I liked this stuff before I had a vested interest; I like it even more now I'm into printmaking. Because this style adapts itself very well to printing. Who would have guessed that of something called 'Poster Style'?
This is how I transform a photo into plakatstil:

Find a suitable image, load into Adobe Illustrator, and live trace it.

This is six colours, though I could use as many colours as I saw fit.
Then hit expand. This vectors the separate colour layers.
Then select all layers and click window-pathfinder-trim. This 'cuts out' the separate colours.
Next click on a single area of one of the colours, then click select-same-fill colour. this will select every bit of that particular colour.
In the layers panel you will now see a square of colour to the right of the layers tab. Create a new layer, then drag the coloured square into the new layer tab. This will move all the areas of that colour into the new layer. Repeat with the rest of the colours.
You now have the picture dissected into separate layers, which can be transferred to screens of lino blocks for printing.

So far the images I've created using this process have been pretty good. I'll carry on experimenting with it to see how far I can go.