Out of the four designs for the quotes, I chose the one from Harry Potter as the final one for the silkscreen printing. (“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”)

Here’s how it all went:

 

Quote Design

When coming up with a design for this quote, I tried finding keywords that could help me with finding relevant images to use. The words were, “swear”, “up”, “no”, “good”.

And so I started finding pictures that could best represent these words.

That’s where I made a mistake.

I was so focused on making sure that the design would convey the exact meaning of the quote that it turned out very, very, literal.

 

So literal.

But there’s only going up from here, so I got to designing a second one. This time, I tried focusing on what the words meant to me, rather than what they literally mean.

I kept the swearing-illuminati-hand part, but everything else was scraped.

To me, the intentions of the quote shows mischief, kinda like saying “anything that can go wrong will go wrong, because I’m going to make sure it happens.”

Also, “solemnly” means to be sincere about it. In this case, however, “sincere” isn’t exactly meant in a positive way. So, to show that, a halo is added around the swear hand, half black, half white. This shows how it’s meaning is a little “two-faced”.

As for the “up to no good” part, I saw it as making sure everything goes wrong, no exceptions. So on the bottom left corner, there are a bunch of icons that symbolise luck and fortune to show the positive things that happen in life. The icons then form lines leading to the middle, where the swear hand and halo are. This is where, through the mischievous promise made, everything is funnelled in and converted to bad things.

 

So now that it’s less literal, another thing I had to work on was the composition. Right then, it’s not exactly symmetrical, but it seems so because of how all the lines intersect in the middle of the design. This makes the composition a little boring. Also, the lucky icons, unlucky icons, swear hand, and halo are all about the same size compared to one another. This makes it hard to figure out which of them is the main focus.

To improve on the composition, the swear hand was scaled up, and immediately, we have a clear focus point. The lower black background was also scaled up to take up more of the composition. This created a stronger asymmetrical look. I also posterised the black portion to give it some texture.

And there we have it; the final design!

So, next up, transferring the design onto the silkscreen.

 

Silkscreen Process

This was really exciting because I’d only ever seen videos of silkscreen printing, and it was really interesting learning how to make one myself.

So first up, we had to apply a layer of this blue substance (I forgot what it’s called, so lets call it smurf-stance for now till I find out what it is).

 

Once the smurf-stance has dried, we moved on to transferring out designs onto the silkscreen. The transparencies with our designs were taped to the frame, and then placed into a machine that exposes it to light.

 

Once it’s out, the excess smurf-stance is washed off–

 

– revealing the design!

 

Time for the text print~

 

Aaand it was too wet. I think I was worried that there wasn’t going to be enough ink, so I put a little too much on there. The parts that weren’t soaking wet also bled a little. The outline of the swear line was also too thin, so it didn’t show up well.

 

But the bottom icons were quite clean, so I had that going for me.

 

After editing my design, like thickening the outline of the swear hand and what not, I went through the entire silkscreen process again. I did so more than once, unfortunately, because when I was washing off the excess smurf-stance, the parts that were supposed to stay in place got washed off. I’m guessing the water pressure was too high.

 

No matter, the process was fun anyways (though time consuming), so I just redid it again, and this time, made sure to stand a little further away when washing it.

And here’s the final design transferred.

 

It took a few tries, but after awhile, I got used to the speed and pressure needed to do the printing part. (But results were a little inconsistent.)

 

Printing

I previously messed up my first tote bag; it had the same problem of bleeding too much into the fabric like it did the newsprint.

But on the first try of the following week’s lesson, I managed to get it right!

 

Strangely enough, subsequent prints were worse than the first.

Nonetheless, the final print turned out well 🙂