7/03/2017 - SKILLS 3 WEEK 1 - HALF TONE

In the first week of our Skill 3 workshops we learnt about using a halftone image to create tonal range with a screen. I had already inadvertently jumped ahead of myself by using a halftone for my Skills 2 Print workshop, so was already well versed in both round and line halftone and it's use and effectiveness.

After transferring our groups four images had been put onto a screen, we got ready to print. We only managed to make four prints however before things started to go awry; the screen started to clog and less and less ink was making it through with every further print. This effected my design particularly heavily as it had the greatest amount of fine detail and therefore lost a lot of definition very quickly. (see right)
Despite our best attempts to clean it, things weren't improving. So our tutor suggested we learn to use the pressure washer, as not only would that be a handy skill to know, but also it would remove this dried on pigment.

We took the screen to the power washer, and found that even that didn't shift the troublesome areas. At this point our tutor said that the premixed ink we used must not have been properly prepared, as this shouldn't happen. She then had to completely recreate the whole screen for us as it would have been quicker than trying to clean it, and the harder you try to scrub the problem away, the more detail you will lose from the emulsion anyway. Although this was a setback and caused us to finish later than the other group, it was interesting to learn how to use the pressure washer, and definitely taught me a lot about how to avoid and fix problems with the screen.

On this second attempt we mixed 50% medium with the problematic ink, and found that it now pulled through the mesh perfectly, therefore a lack of medium must have been the problem before.

I personally didn't like the aesthetic of our 'composite print' as our artistic styles were all vastly different and didn't have any common thread connecting them at all. I could see how it could work better if for example certain aspects were layered over each other;the face painting or my bee printed over the two background-esque pieces in a different colour for instance, however in this format it was not effective at all.

The final thing we attempted in the session was to screen print onto rectangular boxes to give us an idea of how screenprint could be applied to a 3D context. My work wasn't the most applicable to this part of the project, as everything about my design was designed to work in 2D. It was interesting to see the work of others in this aspect though, as some of the other's results were very effective. If I wanted my design to better suit this format I would have created a background layer, perhaps out of honeycomb, in a golden colour to cover the box first, and then tesselate the bees over that background to make the box feel more purposeful and complete.

I enjoyed the workshop, and found this second time my print results were much more universally succesful than the first SKILLS 2 ones. I definitely was getting more of a feel for the correct pattern of flooding and pulling the screen. I want to use the screen again to produce 100 editions of this print, to then wheatpaste around Norwich as a wider campaign about the bees. By producing them in such large numbers, I hope to not only simulate an actual hive-like population of bees around the city, but also I think this would be the perfect opportunity to really practice printing. As I have already noticed a marked improvement in my abilities from just two workshops, I think this could really benefit me.