Project 1

Last week in my screen printing class we created our artwork, or positive. Since this is an experimental course, we explore creating our positive with a variety of things. Yarn, leaves, feathers, paper, and basically anything that's flat and opaque can be taped to acetate or vellum to create the graphic. Cool, right? This also includes simply using an opaque marker to draw.

I initially planned to use Photoshop or Illustrator to achieve a certain quality (I wasn't feeling the organic thing for once), but got too frustrated and gave up. See above this adorable pug picture. I just loved the positive/negative quality of the black and white pug! (It's not my photo, though, so I felt weird using it.) I couldn't get right on the computer with live tracing, etc. I attempted to trace it but didn't know what approach to take.

My fallback plan had been to play around with thread/string, though when I dug around my craft boxes, I also found these black felt letters that I once used to decorate a tote bag. (Remember these? haha, why would you)

So this is what I came up with...disclaimer: it's a beginner course, not a class full of artists, and this was our first project so...yeah it's not super cool, I know.

We printed last night and were encouraged to play around with overprinting image over image, which I actually really liked (see below) The screens we were using are for fabric, rather than paper, but to get the hang of printing, we printed on paper, with the option to print onto t-shirts later (I decided to wait until next class).

We had to choose at least three lighter/bright colors (of course plain black would have been my first pick). My screen started to dry out, so a couple of print weren't too crisp. I also wasn't super careful about paint getting on the bottom of the screen, so blah blah blah disclaimer disclaimer!

I think it's best that I didn't end up doing something via computer. Why not experiment?

Lots of fun! My Japanese course getting cancelled, allowing me to take this course instead, was maybe a blessing in disguise.

(All photos courtesy of my iPhone)