I am finally finished with my first screen printing project! I have two more projects and one more class in which to do them before the semester ends, so needless to say, I will be going into the studio as much as humanly possible outside of class and my four jobs. But I'll think about those later. The first assignment was to create a painting and then base a screen print off of that painting. I did a super detailed painting of a tall ship which turned out to be incredibly ambitious for a first screen print. My original intent was to photograph my progress as I worked, but I never remembered to bring my camera to class, so you will just have to envision the drawn-out, multi-stepped process I went through to create this finished product. I made so many mistakes that I am pretty sure I made all of them. That's right, all of them in the whole screen printing world. No, I didn't. They are infinite.
I seem to recall a quote from somewhere that went something like this: "Make the most interesting mistakes you can come up with! Make mistakes no one else has ever made before!" If anyone recognizes this quote and can tell me who said it, please let me know. It summed up so many of my feelings about learning to screen print. Some mistakes I made were incredibly frustrating and others actually turned out looking pretty cool. In this blog post, I want to share with you the most interesting mistakes I made.
This first one is pretty close to flawless, so you can compare.
This second example was one of my favorite mistakes: The ink in the sky had started to dry before I did the pull with my squeegee, and it gave it a really cool, grainy texture that I love!
The sky in this one however, did not fade the way I wanted.
It came out blocky instead:
This one is totally misaligned. Don't see it? Look at the corners.
I think it looks awesome.
There is one weird moment on the horizon, right behind the ship. I actually like the effect, I just wish it had happened at a different place in the composition:
This one moved between the time I lined it up and the time I did my squeegee pull and my print was like, "Surprise! I put the ripples in the air!" They kinda could be clouds though, right?
...right?
This was by far my most infuriating moment. Some mistakes look great, some are salvageable, but where you get a big, ugly line of black schmutz on your horizon, there's just nothing you can do about it.
All things considered, I deem this project a success! For the second assignment, we are using computers to print photographic images. In photoshop we break down a photo of our choosing into four basic colors: Cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. The computer separates the image out according to the locations and quantities of these colors and then we print out those images onto clear acetate. Those become the images we burn into our photo-emulsion-coated screens. Then we just print those same four colors, one on top of the other and we put the photo back together. It should be a much quicker project because the computer does all the work and I get to do the fun part, which is playing with paint, which is what I studied in college.
The image I chose for the second project is this one,
taken during my apprenticeship at Bread and Puppet:
I have always loved this photo, because I think I look really goofy in it.
I also love the contrast of the serious faces with the bright pink leotards.
I think it will make a rockin' screen print!
And on that note, I hope everyone reading this blog makes some interesting mistakes of their own!
