Breakdown Screenprinting Course

This weekend I attended a Breakdown Screenprinting course at the MAC, led by Emma Jackson. It was a fabulous weekend. We started by building up print paste and dye on the back (face down when printing) surface of the screen, and then pressing various textured objects into it to make impressions in the paste.









Another way of working was to draw onto the screens with print paste using bottles with thin nozzles, with the drawn lines transferring to the finished prints.



The screens were left to dry overnight, and the next morning we came back to them, and picked out all the embedded objects.







Then the big fun began. We laid the screens down onto the (pre-treated) fabric, applied either clear or coloured print paste, and pushed the squeegee down across the screen. Initially heavy areas of dried pastes were acting as a resist, so applied colours only came through the thinner areas. As the paste got wetter and broke down, more and more transferred onto the fabric, meaning that each screen placement resulted in a different print. While the process was hard to tame, it wasn't entirely unpredictable, and produced beautiful results.






Sadly, someone accidentally picked up two of my three finished pieces of fabric so I can't share them with you at the moment, but the MAC are trying to get them back for me.

First Toy Society Drop - Pickle

Having discovered The Toy Society last week, at the weekend I made this little chap:



While he was being made, I named him Pickle. He sat on the bookcase for a couple of days, and I knew that if he was going to be dropped somewhere, I had to do it soon, before I got too attached.

This morning, I packed him into a bag, with a note and a tag inviting people to take him. I left for work a bit early, and hung him outside a local school, waiting for a small person to find him on their way in:



Although the pavement was empty and the roads quite quiet at 8:10 when I was hanging him there, I felt quite nervous, but excited. I hope he makes someone's Monday.

If you want to be part of it, just check out The Toy Society blog, and join to get all the info :)

Edit: My drop is now up on the blog here