silkscreen – ROCHELE YSABEL

2D || Project 2 -Takeaways

Project 2 was definitely more fun to work with, to be honest. Mainly because there wasn’t much manual work to begin with and there’s complete freedom. From choosing movies to picking quotes and googling images that fit, I couldn’t be happier! I didn’t have any trouble in selecting movies, thanks to all the great movies shown in recent years and all the books adapted into movies. Therefore, the quotes kinda stuck in my mind.

However, the conceptual phase wasn’t THAT easy as I thought it would be. Sometimes I have this image in my head of how the whole composition should work out. But finding the right elements wasn’t an easy task. For instance, I wanted this guy to look sad with just a side profile, but that alone probably takes a few pages of Google images to finally get the right one. You are in luck if the image is in high resolution, or else Illustrator comes into the picture.

Apart from that, I tend to look at the quote as a whole sentence and tried too hard to figure out a narrative for it, which I felt overwhelmed and restricted in many ways. Later, I learnt that I could do better if I break up the quotes into words, which made my life so much easier! Each word branched out into something else, which became my sources of inspiration.

The production stage aka silk screen printing was quite the challenge for most of us or maybe it’s just me (?) But thanks to our work-study mentor for guiding us every step of the way. Also, I realized that no matter how many trials we had on newsprint, printing on tote bag was a total different story. (Wish I found out earlier) We only need to take note of the amount of ink used when printing on newsprint, while strength is an important factor during tote bag printing due to different materials.

Given only one tote bag made everything incredibly stressful! And yeah the more careful you try to be, you are more prone to mess things up, which explains my failed attempt in producing a perfect tote bag print. As I have quite a bit of fine lines in my image, I didn’t do another round of printing. Opportunity cost guys!! Smudged image with complete quote or nice image with faint quote. I chose the latter.

All in all, this project is very fulfilling as I get to see the start to end of the whole process – conceptualizing and getting my prints out. In addition, I get to improve my technical skills. Most importantly, I learnt that it is always better to work on something you have a personal connection with, such as movies that you actually watched and quotes that you can relate to instead of googling “top 10 movie quotes”. Because the more emotionally invested you are, the more likely you will put in the efforts to follow through.

Anyway, I have a new found respect for this screen printing! It’s such a practical medium for small artists and I hope we could do more in the future because practice makes perfect!!

P.S I finally understand why a simple T-shirt design can be really pricey… just look at the amount of time and effort in printing one design..

2D || Silk Screen Printing II

It’s tote bag printing week!!!

We began the session with demonstration by JiaHui. Firstly, we had to place four coins on each corner of the screen and tape them all up! The same goes to the inside of the screen, but minus the coins. It was an important step to prevent the ink from seeping through the screen, where there was no emulsion. We were told that the coins will help to achieve an “off contact”, preventing the screen from laying flat on the tote bag.

Next, we put a desired amount of ink on the top of the screen and spread it across using a wooden squeegee. Also, it is essential to place the ink so that it could cover the width of the image.

Before printing on the actual tote bag, we tried on newsprints to check for any discrepancies as well as the amount of force needed.

Since the ink would clog up after printing, the whole session was a series of

SPREAD PRINT WASH REPEAT.

At the end of the session, it was time to dissolve the photo emulsion from the screen. Prior to that, we washed off any excess ink. Using a paint brush, we coated both sides of the screen with remover. Then we allowed some time for the remover to soak in before rinsing it with water.

EW GROSS BUT IT WAS SUPER FUN

FINALLY the screen is completely clean for new designs!

Final product:

Kinda disappointed as the quotes didn’t come out completely, but overall it was a great experience!

P.S the drawstring bags turned out pretty well. (Is that some kind of Murphy’s Law?? You always screwed up the most important thing aka the TOTE BAG)

Thanks Alicia for all the help! And all the laughter during our screwed-up moments LOL

2D || Silk Screen Printing I

The silk screen process was pretty interesting, yet stressful as we were worried about how the screen would turn out.

We started off by coating the screen with two layers of photo sensitive emulsion and let it dry in the oven. This was done in the dark room. We were asked to return 20 minutes later.

Next, we had our images printed in black on transparencies. We taped down the textured side of the transparency onto the screen and placed it in the exposure unit for 18 seconds to expose the emulsion.

After the emulsion has been exposed, it was time to wash it out. The transparency was removed and we brought the screen to another area for rinsing. Using water jet hose, we washed away the emulsion covering the image.

We also scrubbed/rinsed out any excess emulsion afterwards and the screen was once placed in the oven again to dry.

10 minutes later, we went back to collect our screen! It was a huge relief that it turned out pretty well, even though some of the fine lines were not showing up but overall it looked alright!