screenprinting workshop

I don't know if it was the motif, the technique, or the colours or what---oh hell, it was all of it-- but i had a fabulous time in Siri's interfacing silkscreen mini-workshop last night! The last time i silkscreened (16 years ago), we used Polyfab--nice enough but leaving a stiffer hand to the fabrics, and of course it mostly sits on top as a paint. Procion with its additives, in an alginate thickener was heaven.

I forgot however to take a picture of the screen! What you do is take a piece of interfacing and create a stencil in effect, paint a few spots with some of the thickened dye as a resist, then attach the whole to your screen.

screen printing with interfacing

Below, Christina and pointing-teaching Siri :} Siri has taken workshops from Jane Dunnewold so this was much from the "horse's mouth" but with Siri's spin on it---FUN :}

One of my favourite areas. Oranges, go figure!  One thing that i thought was funny, was that i as a person intensely interested in texture, was peering table level at each square, pointing out the textures and lines of shading, while everyone else semed to be looking at the whole as one piece.

Tara with Siri "demonstrating". Tara, and Christina, have a lot of experience silkscreening as well.

And me! Usually since i'm the one doing the camera thing, i'm not in any shots. Christina voluntarily picked up Ms Hissyfit and got a few pics for me, proving i *was* there and participating :}

arlee screen printing with interfacing and Procion

I was the slowest with the screen. Initially i was too cheap with the amount of thickened dye and Siri would glop on more for me. My pressure wasn't even at first as i was a little afraid the screen would move, or that i would do something "wrong"---having not done it in 16 years was a bit daunting, but towards the end, they let me fill in all the spots "missed"--by that point i was having a total ball!

After all the spots are done, there's still some white showing because of the resist:

screen printing with interfacing before last unifying layer of Procion

Tara fills the whole with a thinner layer of yellow with an open screen to unify and cover the whites:

And VOILA!

the completed silk screning with interfacing

I hear the piece will be divided into four and we each get a piece---yum!

I have two screens still from my Cap College days. You can bet that i will be trying this, having the space in our new backyard now! ARGH i wish move day was here and gone!!!!!!!

The only problem is ya can't get sodium alginate in Calgary!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It has to be ordered and mailed from Vancouver or Toronto or wherever. Order time :}

The ThiorheaDiarhhea hasn't arrived yet either for the indigo, so that is on hold still too....all the things i wanna do---i guess i'm being given a lesson in patience!

Update on Fri, June 26, 2009 at 11:46AM by arlee

The PREMIER art cloth site, the Queen, the Last Word, the To Be Aspired To.

Comments

[vero]

Oh, this seems to be fun.
I just can't understand how it works. When I read an article and see the pictures of the results, I find it is beautiful, but I have never seen it for real. So it is a bit of magic to me...

[lisette]

oh i want to do that right now!!! it looks like such fun and the colours are luminous

[judy martin]

Arlee, thanks for showing the entire process. I envy your ACAD residency - and hope that you are really enjoying it. And I agree with you that Jane Dunnewold is the Queen of art cloth . What do you think you'll do with your share of the screen printed cloth?

[Diane]

This looks like such fun! I have never screen printed before but I can think of some interesting possibilities. Your results were spectacular!!

[Carol WIebe]

Fabulous technique, fabulous cloth!

I have Jane Dunnewold's Improvisational Screen Printing Book, but would like to get her DVD. It always helps to SEE something.