student for a day

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.

I preferred the resist stencil method because you can achieve greater detail as you are "painting" the image onto the screen when preparing your screen and it is easier to transfer your image onto your screen. 

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.

The paper stencil was good as well, but your image had to be be "whole" in a way and include continuous lines in a way as you cut it out with an exacto knife. It was fun though and a more organic process in a way.  

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!