Rise, seven colour screen print, created for the Eye Candy exhibition at the Rabbet gallery in Peckham, printed at Sonsoles print studio. The print was inspired by a collage made from found materials that I made earlier in the year while on holiday in France, and by my aerialist daughter Jo.
The quote is from a poem Acrobat by Bengali poet Nabaneeta Dev Sen:
And she would glide, so smooth, along the tightrope,
She thought she could do absolutely anything at all.
Blackberry pink, seven colour screen print. The colours are intuitive, the print dictates what colours to use. Composed of sponge marks and brush marks. Part of a series of four prints.
Seven colour screen print composed of thick and thin brush strokes and sponge marks. Windows of transparent colour to view the layer beneath.
Some images showing process and colour mixing. Printed at the wonderful Sonsoles in Peckham as always.
Seven colour screen print, continuing the theme of playing with transparent and opaque colours. Starting to build a core colour palette for my prints but wanting to introduce new colours while maintaining a harmony.
First screen print of 2024. Six colours, using brush strokes and sponge marks. I wanted to experiment with transparency and opacity.
Print triptych for 2024.
Six colour silkscreen print inspired by a found photograph from a Parisian flea market and overheard conversation in Horniman park. This way she says back to the house, remember.
Communication between a Mother and her daughter, a fleeting moment but significant to me as I overhear it. Marks from laser cut lettering and distressed text with extraneous marks from a gel plate print.
I will ask my neighbour for water, a series of nine colour screen prints. The series was inspired by a collage created in a mixed media and collage class at City Lit with Ruth Franklin. The collage came about through not thinking, the screen prints were very much thought about for months and went through a number of changes in Photoshop.
The words come from a found haiku by Chiyo-ni:
A morning glory
Twined round the bucket:
I will ask my neighbour for water
The original collage, a study in not thinking.
A continuation of the series.
Lime green tangerine, five colour screen print on 310gsm Southbank smooth.
Dirty orange pink, six colour screen print on 300gsm Somerset satin.
Burnt red blue, five colour silkscreen print, printed on 300gsm Somerset satin white.
Raspberry blue olive green, seven colour screen print, printed on 300gsm Somerset satin white.
Indigo magenta, seven colour screenprint, printed on 300gsm Somerset satin white.
Indigo magenta alternate, seven colour screenprint, printed on 300gsm Somerset satin white.
Colour triptych
How each layer is built. Slowly with care and focus.
The silkscreen process. The exposed screen is taped up and secured onto the press. All edges are taped to avoid any unwanted ink onto the paper. Beautiful raspberry blue waiting to be printed.
The starting point for my silkscreen prints, acrylic brush marks, oil pastel scribbles and drawn line images. The marks are random and often I don’t know how these will work together. The marks are scanned and then brought into photoshop. I will spend hours arranging and re arranging them until they click together. Colour is really important in my prints so I spend time making sure that the colours harmonise. I create a colour visual that I will use as a guide when mixing the colours. The next step is to isolate each layer that is to be used in the print, clean them up and then send off for acetates.
Woman and child silkscreen print series. I accidentally placed one acetate over the other one creating a band. I loved the band! It brought to mind interference on an analog television, remember those when we used to have three channels and no remote control? The picture would start to slip upwards leaving a band across the screen and a adult would need to go and twiddle a knob at the back of the set to adjust the vertical hold.
Vertical hold also brings to mind the mother/daughter relationship, complex emotions, love, frustration, misunderstandings sometimes. The hold a mother has over her daughter and the daughter over the mother.
The images are experiments and work in progress. Some time was spent manipulating the photographs in Photoshop to get the right balance and then the images were saved as halftone bitmaps, at 45 degrees and 40 lines per inch.
Background layers, on the left charcoal on tru grain exposed on the light unit at 20 units, under exposed to capture the grey areas of the charcoal. On the right oil pastel on tru grain exposed at 22 units.
The original photographs.
Abstract screenprints produced in Ann Norfield’s class at East London Printmakers. Using colour blends, stencils, painting directly onto the screen with a paint brush and opaque marks drawn and painted onto tru grain acetate with posca pens, oil pastel and ink.
High contrast face manipulated with levels in Photoshop to create a black and white image without grey areas. The photocopy is painted with cooking oil to make it transparent before exposing on the light unit. The face overprints a sunflower stencil.
Second screenprint in the series inspired by found objects and quotes from Alice through the Looking Glass.
She thought she would try the plan, this time, of walking in the opposite direction.
Alice through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
Six colour screen print depicting the circuitous route from childhood to adulthood. I was fortunate enough to visit Paris again in March 2022 and go to the flea market where there is a fantastic stall selling black and white photographs. Really excited to find the little boy on the phone, I felt it was perfect for this print.
I had been investigating the relationship of found images relating to the specific photographs. I see the objects as talismans that guide us on our tricky journey.
During Sue Baker Kentons class Develop your voice, I began investigating Alice in Wonderland and how I could use quotes from the book in my prints. I felt particularly inspired after finding a blue rabbit in a charity shop.
This silkscreen print will become part of a triptych which is currently in progress. The prints are produced at Sonsoles print studio in Peckham.
Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Silkscreen prints based on dreams, escape, sunflowers. Created using layers of charcoal drawings, found images from flea markets and ebay, painted marks and sunflowers that my neighbours planted in the front garden. Printed using 90 and 120 thread screens at Sonsoles print studio in Peckham.
Seven colour silk screen print. Printed at Sonsoles in Peckham, still dreaming.
Wonderful class at City lit as usual and good to be in a class where fellow students are working on many different techniques, I found this inspiring.
Learning points for me, important to work out all the colours before starting to print. See how the colours work together and do a visual with the colours overlaid to check the opacity. The background image should be more visible, the image of the mother should be clearly seen behind the girl’s head.
Follow the photoshop visual for placing of overlaid images. For example the painted swirl should be lower down so that the eye of the girl is visible.
There were some issues with registration but after talking to Sue, she suggested moving the acetate forwards from the edge of the desk. This helped a lot as it meant that the acetate didn’t keep shifting when I was trying to register the colours.
My intention is to create a series of three screenprints on the theme of sleep, dreams and sunflowers. I’ve bought my own screen and waiting on delivery of an A1 portfolio.
Screen print completed today, 2nd September 2021 at Sonsoles in Peckham. The idea is based around sitting in the Horniman museum gardens and just looking at what’s in front of me. The image is of a photograph of a young girl that I bought in a flea market in Paris some years ago.
This took a few weeks to complete and there were a number of issues with the printing especially with the pink halftone.
The first two layers printed relatively easily although there were some registrations issues. I had put registration marks onto the acetates but they were too fine and didn’t show up. I will place the registration marks at the top and bottom of the image next time and make them a bit thicker.
After exposing the acetate for the pink halftone layer and printing this onto newsprint I noticed that there was a mark in the hair area of the image. This would show up on each print. I decided to strip the image down and start again. After re coating the screen and trying the printing of the halftone again, the ink appeared to be too thin and wasn’t covering over the grey image in the background. I bought some magenta ink from Sonsoles and mixed it with my colour to make it more powerful.
After re coating the screen and beginning to reprint the pink halftone I found that the screen hadn’t been washed out enough. Not all of the halftone was visible. The screen needed to be washed out with the high pressure jet to expose all of the fine halftone.
Starting the printing again the ink began to dry on the screen. I needed to add some extra screen print medium to the ink, wash the screen down on the press and start again.
Onto the final dark blue layer which went fairly easily. The main thing I learnt from these sessions is that you need patience and time when screen printing!
We start on screen printing in February 2020, pre lockdown. Before printing you need to save an image in Photoshop to print out onto acetate.
To create a halftone, open up image in Photoshop, select Image>Mode>Bitmap and select Halftone screen. A window will appear offering choices of dot shape and lines per inch.
Match the resolution to whatever you set your file resolution to usually 300dpi.
For Frequency, opt for between 40 and 65 for a 90 mesh screen. The larger the dot the lower the frequency. The Angle is the angle at which the dots are positioned, 45 degrees is the default. Save as a Tiff file and print onto acetate.
Preparing a screen
1. Place the screen paper-side toward you. Pour the light sensitive emulsion into a coating trough. Tip the lip against the bottom and with a single stroke, pull it to the top of the screen.
2. The screen should now go into a drying cabinet away from the light. Leave to dry thoroughly.
3. Expose the image on the light unit, don’t put the image too close to the edge of the screen. String needs to be placed in the well of the screen to increase the vacuum. After exposure (5 units) wash the screen on front and back, put finger onto hose to direct the water onto the screen. This will expose the image. Put screen at the bottom of the drying cupboard to dry.
Cover the yellow edges with masking tape, tape into the corners. Build snaps out of thick cardboard and stick with some masking tape onto the edges of the wooden frame. These stop the ink from sticking to the paper.
4. Make a master copy to use as registration. Print this onto tracing paper. The printing ink should be the consistancy of single cream. The squeegee should be bigger than the image size. Flood the image with ink and then make contact with the table, the squeegee angled at 60 degrees. Make three registration marks, two at the bottom and one down the side.
Printing
Colours need to be printed from light to dark. So if printing a 4 colour print, yellow first, then magenta, next cyan and finally black.
Colour blend
Try a colour blend with two colours, mix the two colours at the bottom of the screen. The more the colours overlap, the more gradated they will appear. Flood the screen with the inks and then pull the squeegee
back following the flooding lines.
Monoprinting
Work directly onto the mesh with a brush and ink. Don’t put on too much ink. Acrylic medium can be used to create negative space in the ink.
Using Posca pens
Pin a sheet of acetate on top of the printed master copy. Centralise the image under the acetate. Draw onto the acetate with lithographic pencil, Posca pen, black oil pastel, or black acrylic paint, expose acetate onto screen.
Thanks to great teaching from Adam Hogarth at City Lit, I’m just starting to get the hang of screen printing.