Saturday I drove a couple hours to take a wonderful screen printing class taught by my friend and artist Kathy Sands.
Several months ago I had purchased a screen from Blicks. I’ve been wanting to play with it and this day I really gave it a work out.
Kathy took us through everything from mixing up our dye paste to taping our screens. For the dyes, we each chose two colors to work with. I chose turquoise and terracotta. We were encouraged to borrow colors from the other students. Then we were ready to play!
My table mate, Beth Brennan, works with one of Kathy’s screens.
After taking a couple pictures I put the camera away. There was just too much to do to record this fun class!
We started with designs we cut out of newspaper or freezer paper. I cut out freezer paper into swirls and squiggly lines. These designs were placed shiny side up on my fabric. I then placed the screen on top of the cut out paper. Once I was happy with my design, I added the dye paste to “well” at the top of the screen and pulled the dye over the screen. After that one pull, the design was stuck to the screen so I could make a lot more copies.
I ended up getting really interesting colors as I added more colors to the mix. In addition to my two colors, I borrowed some amethyst and indigo from Beth.
Then we painted directly on the screen. After we were happy with the design, we put clear print paste in the “well” and pulled it over the screen. The two prints below are the images I made from the direct screen painting. After the second print, the design was gone. Pretty interesting.
Here are a couple more using this technique.
I love how in the prints above how the fabric was crumpled up so it made interesting textures.
We also played with soy wax making designs on our screen and then printing. I dipped a potato masher, and a couple different size spools in the soy wax and pressed them into the back of my screen. When I was happy with the design, I let it dry for a few minutes and then printed with it. I really liked this technique best.
Here is another piece using different colors.
I’m not quite sure whether I’ll add more color to these pieces or what I’ll do with them. More than likely I will be cutting them up. What a fun day!
Looks like so much fun and so lovely!!!
Good write up of the day, Lynda…of course, nothing compares with actually BEING there in the fun! I’m glad you felt it was worth your drive!
kathy recently posted..The Month Of May – Part 2
Agreed! What a fun day! (And I couldn’t have asked for a nicer table-mate.)
Beth, That’s so sweet! Thanks.
Kathy, Thanks. Yes, there is no way I could really let people see what everyone was doing without spending more time taking pics and I wanted to play.
Scarlet, It was so much fun. It was also nice having a man in the class who made some awesome designs. Everyone made such beautiful fabric.
Sounds like a great class! I’ve always wanted to try screenprinting, never had the chance yet. Will you continue doing it at home?
Kristina recently posted..beach day
Kristina, Yes, I plan to. We made a big jar of print paste so I’ve got everything I need to make more prints.
Lucky you! All your pieces turned out really pretty Lynda. This looks like such fun.
Jaime Haney recently posted..Moving in New Art Studio
Jaime, It was fun and Kathy was such a great teacher. But my results were nothing like some of the other students. But I’m okay with that!! (hasn’t always been that way!)