Market Gallery Residency - Day 25

Today I had a session of experimental screenprinting with Roos and Nikki.

I wanted to use stencils and play with blending colours.

 

The initial test pieces on sugar paper were successful, and I tried printing onto a scrap piece of the birch plywood, which also worked well.

I then made a stencil to use on one of the large panels of birch plywood, and we used the big screen and squeegee to create the print.

I poured a line of clear base onto the screen along with the coloured inks because we wanted there to be enough fluid to allow the squeegee to travel over the screen easily.

Unfortunately we had a few problems, and I am not happy with the print made onto the birch plywood. I think the shape looks too small and polite, and the colours have not blended well. Also, the edges of the stencil are not crisp.

But, I am delighted with the image that was printed onto the paper surrounding the triangular cut-out.

The areas on the screen where the clear base was poured has acted as a barrier to the ink, and therefore created a fascinating stop-out pattern.

I think that this paper which was around he stencil is very interesting, and I intend to use this within the exhibition.

 I am keen to have at least one of the birch plywood panels with a screenprinted stencil, and am going to print over the image already printed onto the board. The ink that I made today was fairly transparent, so I am going to make it much more opaque tomorrow so that it covers the present image.