Studio practice

 Screen printing  

Screen printing is the process of transferring a stenciled design onto a flat surface using a mesh screen, ink and a squeegee, there are traditionally two ways to screen print, the first being hand cut stencils and the second is having an image transferred onto the mesh screen, we experimented with both methods.

We started out with the stencil method, a delicate process of cutting out a design that when used through the mesh creates a negative print of your image onto the paper or surface you have chosen. I chose an image i had taken of some flowers i had dried within a book and drew them out onto the paper, i chose this image as i was interested to see what the natural shapes of petals would look like as just pure 2D outlines. 

- The image of dried flowers i worked from 

To cut out our designs we used a cutting mat and scalpel to get sharp crisp lines, this part was definitely the most time consuming and tedious but very important for the final outcome. Once cut out, the stencil is taped to the mesh and the board secured to the print press. I chose a variety of different papers and one by one i printed on them by putting the paper under the mesh board, a black ink on top of the mesh and pulling it through by swiping the squeegee in a downwards motion. when you lift up the mesh board attached to the press it reveals your printed paper underneath. I chose a black ink to really give a crisp shadow effect to the flowers, i also chose a variety of papers, some plain whites and browns but also a page from my Newstead abbey booklet with the title "raw materials"  and a leaflet from the lace achieve at Debbie Bryans. These were just papers i had in my bag but i really like my choice of lettered papers as its like the original photo and gives a biological field study feel to my work but also the papers themselves link back to my original lace starting point and i feel the choice of the raw materials page really gives the original lace starting point and my more current natural study's a really nice cohesion. I am really pleased with the final outcome and the contrast between the dark black ink and the lettered pages as it clearly depicts the flora but also gives a feeling of the absence of them due to the stenciled blank forms, the effect of shadow flowers.

We later tried out the second and slightly easier way of producing a screen print, we had to choose out an image and make sure it was edited correctly to be a true black and white image with absolutely no grey tone and then they are given to the print Technician's to transfer them chemicaly onto the mesh screens.  I took a trip foraging in my local area and tried to take some photos that would be relevant to this task and my theme, i focused my photos on fungi and mushrooms. 

- Below is my original image and the edited version used for the screen prints.

 

The physical printing technique is the same as the other screen printing method just without the stencil as the image is already on the screen, and the lines of the image act as the stencil blocking the ink in certain areas. Securing the screen to the press, putting your paper of choice under the screen and then pulling ink through the screen with a squeegee to lift up the press and board revealing your printed papers underneath.  I first chose an earthy orange ink and used some beige papers to create a really natural feeling to my prints. I also used a bright white cartridge paper, cardboard and tissue paper , and these were good prints but minimal so i decided to add something more to them. As the image is fixed to the screen i was able to wash of the orange ink, dry the screen and work back into the prints with another color. working back into the prints i used a dark black ink slightly moved the placement of my image and printed over the already printed papers and this created a really cool distorted, 3D, hallucinogenic feel to the prints. Originally i didn't want the ring binding of my sketchbook in the image or prints but just could not work out how to remove it so settled for it being a part of the prints but now the prints how been done i rather like it as it again gives that feel of a biological field study and really links my two very different prints together in a subtle way. I'm very happy with these prints and the 3D mushroom tissue paper one is my favorite print due to the contrast between the sharpness of the inks mixed with the distortion of the placements and then the further opaqueness in the tissue paper gives it a beautiful ghostly feel.