29 - September - 2008

Circles: How good ideas go bad

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This was supposed to be a simple three colour print, but ended up reducing a grown man to tears...

(I'm using some of my photos from my Flickr account, see them all here. I got my new supplies and I wanted to debut them on the printing circuit that is my mini-home-studio. I had an idea for a long print, that I was planning on exhibiting in a local art exhibition put on by a local Art Group I am involved in. With work so busy, I had to do everything last minute (it was a real 11th hour situation). After coming up with the artwork I was happy with, I made the screens and set up my printing platform. I had planned on doing a colour scheme of a light lemon yellow, leaf green and a black overprint to tie the image together. So I set about mixing Process Yellow with a lot of white and I thought I got the colour nailed.... ...Until I printed it and let it dry. It printed a lot darker and deeper than I wanted. But the problem was I was so stuck for time and I wanted to do another colour scheme, I let it go and decided to go with the deeper yellow. I then cleaned the screen and slapped on some Leaf Green to print over the yellow. I did one print and knew immediately that this was not the colours I wanted to go together. Rather than reprint the yellow again, I decided to print an orange over the yellow instead (to save the 10-odd yellow prints I had printed already). Here is a photo of the green and yellow together on the only print I have of it. So I then cleaned the screen again. And if anyone has screen printed before, they can attest to the complete and utter nuisance of cleaning screens once, let alone multiple times. I had some Cadmium Orange Hue knocking around, which I decided to use. It is a dark orange which I was never too fond of but I thought it'd look good especially with the black overprint. I printed all my yellow prints with the Cadmium Orange and let them to dry. I wanted to start my second colour scheme as the black overprint was to be the same for both prints, so I wanted the first two colours of each print done so the black overprint would be a single print run, instead of two. I was planning a light pink, Fluorescent Pink and Black colour scheme next. I had never printed with Fluorescents before so I wanted to try that out now so I mixed up my light pink and printed some. As I had the two colour artworks on the same screen, I had to clean down between print runs. I got some Fluorescent Pink ready and printed the second layer. The ink turned out to be very difficult to print, it was constantly drying in the screen, despite a generous helping of screenprinting medium mixed with it (this slows the drying down considerably, making it easier to print and keep on a screen). I didn't have time to investigate what could be making it difficult, it could be the heat, the pigments in the colour, maybe not enough medium, the finer mesh I was using etc. I got a few decent prints and let them dry. At this point I had used the one screen of the two I had made for this print run, printed 5 different colours and cleaned it as many times. My patience was starting to flag but I had to press on as I wanted to get one print to the framer for the exhibition. I set up the black screen and and got it ready to print. I had a batch of black ink ready to go, I had mixed it up previously for my last print the Silver Water Lily. I got one before shot... After that, it went really bad, as awkward as the Fluoro Pink had been, the black was ten times worse. Would not stay wet on the screen. I managed to get a few prints on both pink and yellow/orange colour schemes and promptly gave up. I just didn't have the time and it was really late. My only guess is that because I had used a more open mesh before (about 100 t/inch I think) and now I was using a finer mesh (about 200) I probably should've used more medium to further retard the drying time. I may recoat my screens with 100 mesh because it may produce slightly rougher images, it definitely makes printing and cleaning a lot easier. The next morning, I had to chose between a pink or a yellow/orange print to get framed. I chose the Pink and went on to the framer. Unfortunately it was the wrong choice because even thought the frame made a huge difference, and really improved it, the pink was not working for me so I didn't put it into the exhibition, I put a digital print I created last year in, instead. Here's the framed pink print... I need the screens for my next project, which was also going into the exhibition (hence all the pressure on getting this print done) so they got cleaned off and ready for re-coating. I had though about re-attempting the prints with new colours but I don't think i'll tempt fate any more and leave this filed under 'Good idea gone bad'. (As I said, I'm using some of my photos from my Flickr account, see them all here.)