Print Project - Continued

Following from my last post, my screen has now been exposed with my design.  I have spent some time preparing the screen to print, firstly by taping up the sides of the screen and then by blotting out any unwanted holes in the screen that had appeared during exposure.

The colour palette that I have chosen is blue and pink, so I began mixing colours so that I could have light, mid and a dark tones of my colours to experiment with.  I’ve added the mixed dye to my own storage pots so that I can continue to use the same tones in future.  Whilst mixing my colours I used some different binders to see how they would affect the dyes, mainly in how transparent they would make them.

In the photo above you can see my newly exposed screen with two of my mixed dyes ready to print.  Below you can see a photograph of some of my experimental test pieces from today.  The processes that you can see in these samples include both heat press printing and screen printing, in some cases both techniques have been used on one sample.

I enjoyed using both the heat press and screen printing techniques together today, I think the two combined gave some really interesting effects.  I think that as I add new shades to my colours, I will be looking for tones that are brighter and more striking.  The pastel colours I made today did give a nice effect and I think they could perhaps work well as part of a design that uses brighter colour too.