Back to thickened dye

Printing with thickened dye is something that's really interesting me at present. I think it has a lot of potential for me to combine my love of more formal printmaking with my need to work in textiles, rather than printing on paper. I love the way the hand of the fabric is still so soft, and I love the way you can  build up layers of colour in a fairly controlled way.

Well, that's the theory. My latest screen printing play day with Maz was a lot of fun but none of the results are likely to set the world on fire. I did find it instructive, though, which is the point of the exercise.

My first prints were on paper. OK, I know I just said I prefer fabric but remember that I'm also trying to include some tree prints for my Fibrecircle tree journal every time I do anything. I used the screen I created with wax resist back here and added some tree cutouts I've made from cartridge paper.

The results were a bit dubious, because the background was so busy that the tree silhouette tended to get lost. (The tree shape is also rather weird!)

I printed eight of these, thinking I could do different things with them, so I set a couple aside and put the rest in the to-do pile.

While I was doing paper, I tried a print with my oldest screen. It's was originally made by cutting jagged paper strips with scissors but I liked it so much I gave it a coat of resist so it's actually the reverse of the original screen.

It's quite interesting and I like it, though I have no idea what use it might be!

I used the same green on two samples I printed on the same day , the yellow one and the pale orange one.

Not terribly exciting but it's another layer. More to come...

Then I printed a calico bag that I dyed back in 2013. It was a bit boring...

 ... so I decided to add some printing. The first side was OK, though not exciting...

...but the second side wasn't much good, because the screen dried out a bit much between prints. I always forget it does that.

I think it might be quite interesting with some more layers added. We'll see.

Then I took some quilters' muslin fat quarters that I dyed with Maz last time. They were ones I thought were the least interesting. This one was printed with the oldest screen.

It's OK - quite interesting.

These two were printed with the newest screen. The first is OK but needs more to happen to it.

 This one is rather nice - I do like it.

 

As printing days go, I've had better results but it was fun anyway!

Out of hand

First of all, something about how I work: It often seems like I'm not actually doing anything. (Truthfully, sometimes I'm not!) Some of my friends like to just start and see where it takes them, making lots of false starts and mistakes along the way. I can't work like that; it drives me nuts! I have a long conversation with myself via a Word document, over a period of weeks, sometimes months, about how the work will come together. Then I just make it, usually over quite a short period.

So this is some excerpts from that online conversation.

I decided that I was interested in the concept wanton. I also found I was interested in faces, although these are technically difficult. They lend themselves to printing, though, as the most basic images read as faces, hence the popularity of emoticons. I am hoping for something more nuanced than that, of course! I didn't want to use an image of someone recognisable so I decided to use an image of a forebear of mine, long since gone to her reward. She wasn't, as far as I know, at all wanton. She was a very fierce and independent woman, which probably didn't make her a popular person in her time and so she probably attracted a few labels in her time. I'm using her silhouette, as a kind of all-purpose woman.

I did some research on the kind of women who were labelled as wanton, which led me to the Newcastle Industrial School I mentioned last time. I also got side-tracked onto words for prostitute (I found 37 before I stopped looking) and so many of them were denigrating. It intrigued me that there were no equivalent words for a man who goes with a prostitute. There isn't a word in Australian or UK English; the US word is a john. In Australia, they are clients or customers or punters...all words that have more respectable connotations as well. Just one of the double standards in our society, I guess.

Getting out of hand

One of the things I've been doing, when I'm not playing, has been planning for works I'm making for an exhibition later this year.

OK, first the exhibition. It's with a group from ATASDA called Untethered, which has formed specifically to exhibit together. The difference about this group is that we formed to work collegiately (for want of a better word). I can't say collaboratively because that generally means people working on the same work; this is working together on our individual pieces, talking about our ideas, supporting each other, critiquing ideas, having exhibition visits together. It's a different kind of exhibition group.

The theme of the first exhibition is out of hand. The exhibition will be held at Wallarobba Arts and Cultural Centre, Edgeworth David Ave, Hornsby, 9th November - 15th November 2015. I'm sure you'll hear more about this in due course!

I don't usually post about my process, because most of the time it's just thinking. But maybe other people find my process as interesting as I find other people's process? Doubtful. If you get bored, just move on!

For my out of hand, I decided to work with the concept of wanton. I want to say something about the way we label people, and how sometimes the labels become the only way to think about that person. That was most visibly true in the past when women could be labelled as social outcasts, often through no fault of their own. For example, the young women sent to the Newcastle Industrial School in the 1870s were stigmatised, even though they may have been sent there for reasons beyond their control, like poverty or sexual assault. For more information about the Newcastle Industrial School, go to their very illuminating website.

I'll post more about my out of hand thinking, in between the play days and other stuff.

Carved block printing

Yep, still trees. I'm trying to stay ahead with my journaling for Fibrecircle by making sure every bit of printing I do includes at least one tree. This time, Claire and I were using our screen printing inks (Permaset, Derivan). Claire was working with the compressed sponge stamp she cut last time we got together, as you can read in her blog post.

I decided I would carve a stamp from EzyCarve but one turned into two - one relief, one inscribed, both trees. My inspiration was this photo I took about 20 years ago in Lord Howe Island. I liked the image as it was, but also because it reminded me a little of the shape of thorn trees in Africa, so these stamps could be used in the book I'm making.

I started with a rubbing with Inktense pencil, just to check out what the stamp looked like.

I noticed I hadn't cut the background as cleanly as I'd like, in the left hand top corner, but I actually liked the effect so I left it as it was.

Then I made a straight stamp in black ink.

I deliberately inked the stamp with a brush, so I would get some texture marks.

Then I went on experimenting with intaglio printing. I painted the block with yellow ink, wiped the surface clean and painted over with a runnier black ink. This one is not hugely successful, because I made the black a little too runny. It does look rather atmospheric, though - you expect to see a witch on a broomstick in the far distance.

I printed this one from the remains of the previous one. I think it's the best from this stamp.

I deliberately reversed the incised image so it would look different. Here's the watercolour pencil test rubbing..

This one was a rubbing with layers of colour and then an outline added afterwards with black pen and ink.

 It's too tidy for my liking!

I made this one by wetting the cartridge paper first and then working on it with the same colour watercolour pencils.

Moving onto inks, the black print...

Again, you can see the deliberate brush marks.

This intaglio version is the reverse of the other block - black first in the lines, then runny yellow over the top.

This is my favourite of the day's prints.

Taking a small step from printing...

I had a lovely day with Maz recently, dyeing some bits and pieces. Nothing particularly remarkable - this was bib-and-braces dyeing, stuff that's going to have something more interesting happening to it. But in the interest of process...

I dyed some cotton yarn I bought at an op shop recently. Unlike most op shop finds, it was labelled, Twilleys of Stamford, and there were 50g two balls, more than enough to do something interesting with. I often rescue interesting cotton yarns from op shops as I have a long term plan to weave something with them, once they're dyed.

It's turned out rather more... orange... than I expected, considering how much pink it had. But it will be wonderful woven with another couple of colours.

 



Then I did a whole lot of cotton fat quarters and slightly smaller pieces, thinking I will probably print on them.

 

The smaller pieces will either get used for testing prints and/or cut apart for fabric packs or used in a quilt I'm currently cutting from my dyed fabric scraps.

 

Finally, I dyed a couple of silk habotai scarves, which were kept pale because I definitely over-dye or over-print them.

 

Basically, a useful day rather than a terribly creative one, though space dyeing is always fun!

A little bit of printing does you good #3

I've also had a play day with Claire recently. Honestly, my life is all play, play, play.. (I wish).
We decided to work with printing inks using stamps and blocks. I had my Permaset collection; Claire brought Derivan printing inks.

Our  main interest was trying our compressed sponge to make stamps, because we'd both bought some, literally, years ago and had never done anything with it. Basically, it comes like a piece of thick cardboard, so you can cut it with scissors or a craft knife. A craft knife feels weird as the medium is a bit bumpy, but it worked OK.

I stayed with trees, because these play days may as well contribute to something I'm meant to be doing! I'm always interested in positive-negative effects, so I cut out my stamp in a way I hoped would allow me to play with that. Well, dummy, cutting the shape from one end  means the edges will move around... Note to self, make sure the outer shape has four solid sides. I don't think I'd want to cut anything really intricate - my tree centre is a bit unstable and needs care when printing.

This is how the stamp looked once it had been expanded in water. That is such a fun process - the cardboard-like material just miraculously grows into a sponge. I could watch that all day.

We dried the sponges out as best we could and off I went, stamping my basic shape first with blue and then adding olive green. This was just to see how to printed and how dry it needed to be.

You can see the sponge has that lovely bubbly texture of a kitchen sponge. When it was a bit wet, it tended to push the ink around, so you lose the texture, as you can see on the right hand side. But I think it does need to be a bit damp to print well.

And here's a negative version, stamping with the surround and the centre. I blended the colour into layers when I put the colour on the stamp.

Then I tried using all three, and this is where the way the background moved around was a problem. I'm not sure it's a medium that works for this anyway, as there's too much of the same texture. I didn't bother adding the tree centre.

 Just a trio of the three kinds of print...

I noticed that you tend to get more repeat prints from the sponge than from other media, each print getting paler and paler. That's probably because the sponge is wet, so the print media doesn't get trapped in it as much. So I decided to play with this process to try to get some depth.

It works OK, clearer in the flesh than in a photo. Just fun to try, really.

Last of all, I made a print with Maz's stamp again, to contrast the printing inks with the thickened dye. This one's on cotton quilters muslin.

You can see how much sharper the print is. I'm going to try making the dye thicker, to see how that affects the process... sometime! 

A little bit of printing does you good #2

My second lot of printing was a play day with my friend Maz. We decided to do some screen printing with thickened dye, which is something I want to do a lot more of. I've done quite a bit of breakdown printing, which is making patterns with thickened dye on the screen and then printing it with other thickened dye or the thickener, so the pattern slowly breaks down. But I haven't used thickened dye in the same was as I'd use printing inks. Well, it's not the same way, because the consistency is different and the way the colours interact is more like over dyeing. Plenty of opportunity to make a mess..

Before our play day, I decided to  experiment with a product that my friend Kirry gave me. It's called Mask-Ease and you can see it here, as well as a stack of other places, including You Tube demonstrations. Basically, it's a system for putting a solid, reusable resist on a silk screen, without losing those pesky little bits or having to wash the screen for hours to remove it. I kept my design simple on purpose, because my paws don't always behave as they ought and part of the experiment was to see whether this process suited me.  The yellow medium is very soft but I still found cutting the stencil slightly challenging and it took me several sessions. But if you have paws that behave properly, it would be a breeze!

And transferring the image, which had those little fiddly bits was just fantastically easy. The whole process is way easier than most other methods, so I'll certainly use this when I want to print with little fiddly details.

Here's what the Mask-Ease looks like on the screen. (This was actually taken after printing, hence the green tinge to the screen from the dye). The design is repeat in both directions, so I can use it on a large piece of cloth.



 

First, I tried the screen on paper. Printing with thickened dye on paper is never as sharp, as with printing inks or other media, but I wanted to see what the design looked like.                                                                It's a stronger line that I'd usually use but it looks pretty much as I expected, since I was keeping the design simple. The blurriness is just from the dye pooling on the cartridge paper, as it's such a wet medium.

 

OK on to printing fabric. Part of the point of this play day for me was to explore how thickened dyes differ from printing inks. I printed with yellow mixed with the blue from the earlier print. I didn't tape or pin the fabric firmly, as I wanted to break up those areas of strong colour.

 

OK, that worked. But the areas of white bugged me, so I overprinted with yellow using another screen I created back here. It broke up the white but in retrospect, yellow wasn't a good colour to use. That's fine, that's what this is all about...

This will have a whole lot more happening to it, if it's going to be a useful piece of cloth. But then again it may just be a sample to experiment on..

Time was passing all too fast and I wanted to try out my other screen.

I made this one the night before, in front of the TV, using my wax screen resist from Batik Oetoro and a whole lot of bits and pieces like paper doilies, cotton reels, wooden craft shapes and the brush I keep for wax resist. Basically, I just stamped and painted around shapes and filled in with texture, all over the surface of the screen. It was more like we do for breakdown printing, but with the wax resist. Fun!

My first print as designed to be overprinted later, once it was dry, so I printed in yellow.

It's lovely and sharp, so you can really see how the screen looked, but it's fairly pale, of course.

 

For my second print, I added red to half the screen and allowed it to mix randomly with the yellow on the other half. I wanted to see how the colours blended, as this screen would also work for a larger piece of cloth with multiple repeats. I didn't allow myself to get distracted into printing yards of cloth though..

 

The screen was rather wet, by this stage, which makes me feel we need to thicken the medium rather more for this kind of printing. So I did two pulls to dry it out a bit.

 

They turned out as quite good prints too.

 

For my last experiment, I wanted to see what happens if you print wet on wet. You never do this with printing inks, but we've done it with breakdown printing and it goes back to my attempts to understand how dyed colours overlay each other and whether wet on wet is different to over dyeing later, after the first print has batched and been rinsed. First I printed in yellow, so it looked very much like the yellow print above. Then immediately, I moved the screen about 1cm offset and printed in orange. Then I turned the screen 180 degrees and printed in a magenta purple colour.

The colours interacted in interesting ways. Where the yellow and orange met, the yellow acted almost as a resist to the orange, pushing it out to the edges. When I printed with the purple, it turned brown in some places, as I expected, especially where the lines of colour were fine. But the orange and yellow also acted as a resist to the purple in places.While sometimes, the warm colours pushed the purple to the edge of the shape,in others, the purple actually over dyed the yellow. Frankly, it leaves me scratching my head (in a delighted kind of way). I've experienced this before with breakdown printing, with some colours resisting others, but that's such a harum scarum kind of printing process, it's hard to work out which colour is doing what!

 

As experiments go, it was a useful process and will be more so when I overprint the yellow piece and see how that differs. I can see that this kind of printing will be fabulous on my scarves and on large scale cloth prints. But I'm disappointed to see that, unless I get a whole lot better at predicting the interactions, I'm pretty much going to have to stick to printing inks on fabric, when I want a distinct outline in my colour layers and a lot of control.

 

Last of all, just for fun.. Maz brought along various print blocks and linocuts. She inherited this one from Mary Beeston (there's some pretty basic info here but just Google her) and it has seen hard use in its time.

It was one of three similar linocuts that belonged to Mary. I'm not sure what she did with them - images of her work are few and  far between on the net - but it was fun to print from one of her blocks.

 

Maz also brought along a tree stamp, because the girls from Fibrecircle are working on the theme of Trees in our sketchbooks this year. I used it to stamp some trees onto a paper background I'd created when we were drying off the second screen.

OK, that's going in the sketchbook!