Thread Print

We turned in our first batch of projects this evening. I turned in a t-shirt, tank top, two pillows, and a tote bag I sewed earlier today. Tonight we practiced using opaque inks on dark grounds. I played around with this thread since I had a needle on hand, sewing it back and forth through this piece of vellum. I was going for an irregular stripe kind of look.

Kind of fun! I flipped the screen to make the print repeat lengthwise.

Door shot to show the scale. And just how wrinkly the fabric is.

I spent most of the class sewing the vellum/burning it into the screen. Next class, I plan to play around with this print more. Maybe criss-cross the design? We'll see! Not sure exactly what I'll do with these prints.

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Remember that KNOT graphic from my first project? I printed it on a t-shirt for Mack, and it turned out pretty nicely! Pictures later.

In class last night, we experimented with this amazing marbelization technique. (Pictures another time, also) I, however, was itching to burn and print this artwork, created by my sister, Kia. This piece has been on my mind since I first saw it. Poetic diagrams...I eat this shit up.

Here it is printed on vellum, ready for burning:

I was able to squeeze in just a couple of test prints before class ended.

As you can see, the prints are patchy in areas. I'll have to check out my screen and see if this from my weak arms (ho ho ho) or not everything burning through.

My professor has scheduled a trip to her company's loft studio in SoHo. She's going to explain to us how to set up a home studio. I'm itching to know all the details because for the semester, we are only able to print in the classroom/studio space, which is not available for use outside of class time.

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)

sd101

I started my experimental screenprinting course this week! I already wish I had the class more than twice a week. This is such a nice departure from fashion design courses, while it is definitely relevant/applicable.

I'm itching to take some more photos of the screenprinting lab but don't want to be too obnoxious...so these two will do for now.