As part of workshop week I took part in a screen printing session
in Halifax which was based at “The Artworks” in Shaw Lodge Mills. The Artworks
School of Art has a variety of studios in which you can improve your creative
skills, hey also host courses and workshops including ceramics, screen
printing, life drawing and more.
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| Sketched Out Design |
I decided beforehand, that I would incorporate this screen
printing workshop in with my City In Flux project therefore gathering a wider
selection of experimentation into my project. To start off with you draw out
your design, simple geometric shapes are ideal for the beginner and as I found
later it is best to start off with a design where shapes don’t overlap, though
this isn’t an issue. Once the design is drawn out you now need to trace it and
then cut out the shapes from the tracing paper before then attaching the sheet
to a screen. In order to attach it to the screen simply secure with masking
tape as shown.
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| Ready To Print |
Now its time for the messy part, firstly choose a colour to
work with, I have chosen a bright yellow here and then apply to the colour
plate. In order for the paint to work well with the paper liberally roll over
the paint using a roller to get air into the mixture as this will loosen the
paint up ensuring an easier coverage.
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| Freshly Printed - First Layer |
As I had overlapped some of my shapes the ink (I had chosen
to do the next layer in a different colour) therefore mixed on these areas,
this isn’t a problem though ideally you should wait for the paper to dry before
apply the next coat of paint. I chose to carry on regardless due to time
limitations and the result turned out quite well considering. A good tip to point out when using a number of overlapping layers is to mark a cross on the outer edges of the image and next to areas in which the layers overlap, this which ensure that you can easily realign the layers throughout the printing process.
Finally you have the clean up stage, this involves setting your
freshly printed papers and used stencils on the drying rack before wiping the
surfaces and equipment down as to ensure its proper maintenance for the next user.
Review of Workshop
I found this workshop to be fun, although a little messy and
well worth the visit. In future I will take into consideration the outcome I
found by choosing to have overlapping shapes and possibly opt for a more
simplistic design.
My two resulting images can be seen below and are based upon the form of a Swan. I feel my second try with this technique was a lot more interesting in terms of visual appeal, this is due to the displacement I carried out with the layering of the sections.
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| Version 1 |
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| Version 2 - I altered the positioning of the layers on this print. |
