In process: screen printing

August 27, 2016

Reviewing a new set of screen prints. Each time I do this I think of different angles to try - one of the advantages of working on several at a time rather than just one piece. I'm about to do some more so am thinking about colour, format, marks, layers.

Screen print and dye book August 2016 Helen Terry

As a way of organising myself I wrote out a list of all the steps I needed to take in order to print these. It was salutary to notice just how much of the process relies on the relatively mundane preparatory tasks - cutting up cloth, mixing dye, sampling, rinsing. Making the screens and actually printing the cloth is only part of the whole. It is useful to remember that when I am managing my time as it is frustrating when I have set aside time for printing to find that I need to do some preparatory tasks first, that could have been done in those small chunks of time between other things.

Screen prints on the wall August 2016 Helen Terry.jpg

I pinned up some of the prints on top of some plainer painted cloth to get a feel for possible combinations. This is all work in progress - much more to do before these become finished pieces of work.

Setback

November 8, 2015

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.

Resistance

June 21, 2015

Quite a lot of "resistance" - in Steven Pressfield terms - this past week. I have struggled to get into the studio and get going ... even though I had eleven screens ready to print. And then when I did start, I managed to make preparing cloth and mixing dye last a whole day!

I think in part this is a perverse response to the fact that things have been going well. I like the samples I've already printed so much as they are ... and yet I know they need something more. So there's been a subconscious reluctance to "meddle" with the process and just keep doing more of the same - play "safe" ... maybe just change scale.

The other factor I think is that this is quite a change in my process. Preparing and printing the screens involves making different kinds of decisions. And at an earlier stage in the process of producing cloth. I'm having to adjust to this.

And yet another factor is that I am unsure how I am going to work with these pieces. I love what's happening and know that this is a direction I want to pursue ... but I have no idea at this point how I will turn these into finished work. (And, yes, I do know I don't need to have the answers to that yet!)

I always draw comfort from Pressfield's assertion that if you're feeling resistance to doing something, you're getting somewhere. And the only useful response is to get back to work. I got my act together and printed over half the screens. I experimented with different kinds of cloth and started to bring in more colour and layer marks. The one above was printed on muslin with a plain cotton underneath. Well, it had to be tried but this was not one of the more successful, or most interesting, trials. I want to evaluate the results before I print the remaining screens, but it's looking promising. One thing that has helped has been to bring in elements from previous work. It's helping me to find my way in.

Not many images with this post. I'm wary of sharing too much when my ideas are at such a fragile stage. This is actually a good sign - it means I think I'm making progress.

Experimentation

June 6, 2015

Over the past few months I've been experimenting with different ways of making marks on cloth. While I love the linear marks I have been producing with shibori and other techniques, I don't want to just keep repeating myself. So I've been shaking things up.

I started by looking through my library of photographs and identifying certain qualities that interested me. I also collected images with similar qualities from the internet and elsewhere to expand my ideas about what I might do. Then I thought about ways I might achieve similar effects on cloth.

Since February, I've been engaged in an extended, on and off, process of experimenting - in between making new work for exhibition. There have been some outright failures. Dip-dye techniques are now crossed firmly off my list of possibilities. But there have also been some interesting beginnings.

I've deliberately investigated methods I tend not to use much. I generally avoid screen-printing because I'm not interested in repeating designs. But mixing screen-printing with drawing and mono-print techniques has led to some exciting results.

I also don't normally use screen inks. But I wondered what would happen if I used them to resist the dye ... and there were some surprises with interesting texture effects.

There is still loads to do. I need to solve some technical issues; refine techniques; think about colour; develop the marks and imagery ... and all just to develop an initial collection of different fabrics. Only then can I start to play around with ideas for new work.

In the meantime I carry on making work with my existing fabrics. Although In practice, some of my new ideas are starting to creep in anyway ...