Setback. Noun. A reversal or check in progress, relapse, placing (of project) farther back in space or time than it might have been. Synonyms: problem, difficulty, hitch, issue, disappointment, complication ...
I had 15 silk screens prepared and have been printing and processing them a few at a time. I processed the first set and the results were ... disappointing, lacklustre, uninspiring. The colours were boring and the print quality was poor.
In retrospect I had taken rather a lot of chances with these prints, without testing things out first. Since I was repeating techniques I had tried earlier this year I thought I knew what would happen. Never think you already know what will happen with dye if you change the cloth, colour, value, and especially all three at once!
Frustrated. Cross. And interesting how it brought out all my self doubt too. None of which is terribly helpful of course. So I walked away and did something else for a while. Then armed myself with a cup of tea, pinned everything up and had a closer look. I wrote a little rant in my sketchbook about everything I did not like ... but then started to work out what had actually gone wrong and what I could do about it. My main concern was the screens I still had left to print rather than salvaging these prints (I can always over-print or over-dye those).
There were some things I couldn't change, at least not without totally undoing hours of preparation. But there were a couple of things I could do something about that might be enough to improve the next set of screen prints. Fingers crossed, so far these look much more promising.
