A couple weekends ago, I took an afternoon screen printing class held at the Living Arts Centre here in Mississauga. I haven't done any sort of real printmaking since back in my first year of university...20 years ago! I've been interested in adding a bit of screen printing into my artwork and combining it with my painting so a refresher course was definitely needed!
Our instructor was really great and the 4+ hour class flew by - it was so much fun! The class was a varied group of all women interested in screen printing for different reasons and all creating creative imagery. I would consider taking another class at the Living Arts Centre just for fun - they have classes in wood, ceramics and glass which would be interesting.
We did 2 methods of screen printing; a resist stencil and a paper stencil. I decided to work with 2 images just for fun, one for me and one for my son. I was going to print a vehicle on some white t-shirts for him, he requested a monster truck. I did a butterfly for myself on a t-shirt and small tote.
The resist stencil, painted on the screen with screen filler waiting to dry. Although I omitted a section in the back tire, there was no way to fix it at this point so I called it a "happy accident" that hopefully no one would notice but me!
A test print on paper before printing on the shirts.
The 1st t-shirt, the ink wasn't as consistent throughout but that added to the handmade feel of the image.
Of course I needed to perfect it for the 2nd shirt - a deeper, more solid print the 2nd time.
Here is my (wrinkly) butterfly printed tote - mixed some teal and blue together when pulling the print.
A detail of the butterfly paper stencil image.
I think going forward, I will try out the resist method for some products that are in the works behind the scenes (and on instagram!) for now. I will be printing onto cotton and potentially paper and wood. Still playing around with the ideas but happy now that I have the skills needed to introduce printmaking to my painting for Tiny Brushstrokes!
No comments:
Post a Comment