Screen printing experiment

Screen printing is a process that I have always been rather curious about and wanting to learn more of. I therefore took the oppurtunity to try a second attempt at the printing process at the university of Brightons printing workshop and studio.

With some added guidance from the tutor in the studio,  I regained my understanding of the process and the steps from choosing the right mesh count of the screen, to printing and washing. The image I chose was a simple picture of a tank and a caterpillar ( to be used for an up and coming project) just to explore  the process again. I was working alongside another student and therefore, I was able to share a screen together and assist each other if necessary .

Having coated the screen with emulsion, I placed the screen into the drying machine. This meant the screen would be dryer quicker than if it was left to air – dry. Once the screen was ready, my image of the tank was placed onto the screen and secured with tape. ( the tutor advised me to to convert the image into a bitmap for future reference as this would add more detail to the image regarding the black and white areas and would have greater contrast when printing.)

When exposing the the screen onto a UV light machine, it was important to calculate the correct exposure time. This was familiar to me, having used exposure machines for photography and cyanotype printing. Once exposed, the screen is then washed with water which clears any residue and enchances image clarity ready for printing.

Intially, it was  rather difficult to know how much ink to use when printing and that a different volume of ink can yield a different results ( This became easier with practice). Indeed, the accidently mixing of water with some ink produced interesting results; creating an unclear and smudge-like  image.

I feel my images are not adequate regarding quality, this second attempt at screen printing has been a valuable  learning experience, for which I now have a greater understanding of the process and preparation involved. I aim to continue with screen printing using carefully selected imagerey .

Project Brief : The City

I initially found generating ideas for this project challenging as I have worked on similar project themes before during my studies in photography and graphic design at college.

Therefore, I wanted to choose aspects  of a  city and urban environments that I have not explored before and to distance myself from those that are obvious and cliché.

During the last 4 months, Brighton has hosted a charity art exhibition based on the Christmas animation ‘The Snowman’ and the ‘Snow dog’. The exhibition involved large sculptures of snow dogs with each sculpture having a unique surface design with various colours, patterns and imagery. A digital app was released in which the public could follow the “snow dog trail”, finding and documenting each sculpture around Brighton and Hove.

I felt this would be an interesting topic to explore and document as it was unordinary and not something that one may initially think of regarding ‘the city’.

I started by exploring Brighton and searching for each snow dog sculpture. Using a digital camera, I documented the sculptures and in particular, the designs and patterns on the dogs themselves.

Using the imagery I collected, I then went about manipulating and overlaying the photographs digitally and exploring different methods to manipulate the photographs. In addition to these photographs, I also photographed Brighton’s most renowned monuments and attractions with the intention of creating my own sculpture designs

(I had reservations initially because I would be photographing and using designs that have been created by other artists However, as stated in the brief, documenting was an important and key aim of this project.)

In addition to photographs, I needed a process that could replicate the shape of a snow dog. Having purchased a couple of snow dog miniature figurines, I decided to use these for creating photograms as the solid shape of the figurine would leave a near perfect outline of the figure.

 

Having scanned my photograms into digital software, I started to experiment combining my photograms with the photographs I had taken thus creating my own two dimensional snow dog images.

 

 

In addition to the already pre-existing designs and patterns from the large sculptures themselves, I used my own imagery of Brighton pier, Brighton Marina, the Royal Pavilion and the colourful and vibrant beach huts in Hove to create my own designs which I felt was important and would allow the location of Brighton to be more identifiable due to the attractions and structures.

 

The outcome for this project was to be a print publication. Therefore, I decided to choose the format of a concertina / accordion book with a hardback cover as I felt this style of book was appropriate to the repeated imagery of the snow dogs and would enhance the aesthetic communication and focus of the audience. Using the software Adobe InDesign, it was important that I created a layout of the book and assigned the correct colour profiles and settings to the files before I handed them over to a local print company so that the quality would be correct when printed onto paper. This included making sure all images were in CMYK colour settings.

One problem I faced was that the book containing twelve pages could not be printed on to a single sheet as this was beyond the maximum size. As discussed with the printers, I decided to have the twelves pages split into two groups of six on a single sided page and thus it became a matter cutting out and spray mounting one of the groups to the back of the other group of six. This was challenging but to begin with as I needed the pages to accurately line up. I had to cut off an extra 1.5cm of the longest edges to allow perfect positioning. This of course, trimmed off some of my design but fortunately did not affect the imagery and important areas of the design.

 

 

I feel this project has been one of my most successful in terms of final outcome. Being conscious of time management, If I was to spend more time on this project, I would of liked to of used different graphic and photographic processes such as lino printing and cyanotypes which I believe would of been effective as a snow dog design.