Polychromatic and Breakdown Printing

We did Polychromatic and Breakdown Printing in class. Very chemically and very messy work. My classmates made a much better fist of it which always demoralises me.

Polychromatic Printing

Polychromatic printing is where Procion MX dye is painted onto the screen and dried. It is then printed out onto cloth that has been previously soda soaked and dried. This is done by pulling dye paste through the screen.

You more or less know what you're going to get but as you repeat the print it fades which can give some nice effects.

From this screen...

...I got this print - I had sprinkled some hole punch dots on the cloth

For the next try (below) I laid out a tree stencil and pulled a screen with reds and magentas dried on it. I went left to right so the print faded as it went. I then laid out a leaf stencil and with a green screen I pulled from right to left so the leaves get fainter as they go.

Because the cloth was wet from the first pull the leaves have a fuzzy edge. If I wanted a sharp edge I'd need to let the first layer batch and dry and do the leaves another day.

Print Two

The tree stencil after the pulls

The leaf stencil after the pulls

For my final try I painted some olive green on a screen but without going all the way to the edges. It looked purposely painterly. I then put some magenta dots randomly across the screen. After it dried I laid out some bird stencils on the fabric and pulled.

Print Three

Bird stencils

Breakdown Printing

It's worth watching this video of Kerr Grabowski demoing Deconstructed (Breakdown) Screen Printing first.

The difference here is that the dye applied to the screen is thickened dye. As the print paste is pulled over it it releases parts of the dye randomly. The results are unexpected and exciting.

Mine where somewhat underwhelming if I'm honest but at least I tried.

Applying the thickened dye to one of my homemade screens

Speeding up the drying process

Being underwhelmed by the results

Links

http://www.kerrgrabowski.com/dsp.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvHY-LhLsAQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOV1fsetz04

https://katherinesands.wordpress.com/tutorial-breakdown-printing/

http://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2014/04/12/breakdown-screen-printing-party/

Breakdown Printing: New Dimensions for Texture and Colour Paperback by Claire Benn and Leslie Morgan

Gray's School of Art paste recipes (somewhat scientific).

Making my own Screens for Printing (and Thermofax Orders)

I decided to make my own screens for printing having seen how flexible (literally) the Thermofax screens are. There's nothing to say that screens have to be framed and heavy and unwieldy.

I made two types. One from plain mesh which I bought from Hunt The Moon and one from some screens I had made up by Thermofax which I bought unframed to keep the cost down.

Making up the screens

For the plain mesh I went for white 43T which is good for fabric printing. If you want to understand the mesh sizes I found these links useful: Catspit Forum and Catspit site. But you can as easily go and buy some sturdy net curtain.

The Thermofax screens come ready cut to size.

To make a frame I used a card envelope that I'd had some books delivered in as it was a good mix of flexible and stiff. I also made some without the card frame, just duct tape.

You can buy ready-cut plastic frames from Thermofax but I thought they were a bit thick and that the mini sized ones have really narrow edges on the long side. But I have yet to try them out.

Measure out and cut the card frame

Cut the opening of the card frame

Put double-sided sticky take around the edges to hold the mesh screen; if you are using a Thermofax screen then make sure to place it the right way round (they include clear instructions)

Surround the frame with duct tape

Turn over and surround the frame with more duct tape making sure to line it up with the tape on the other side of the screen

Neat corners

If you are making up a Thermofax screen then be sure to mark your screen with which side is up; I've also add a reminder to wash the screen

I also made up a totally frameless screen and this is how I did it.

Tape the mesh screen to a cutting board with masking tape - make sure to get it nice and flat by readjusting one corner at a time (I stretched this one out a bit more than you see in the photo)

Place duct tape all the way around on one side then turn over and place duct tape on the other side taking care to match up exactly over the tape underneath; or you could just fold the tape from underneath over itself - remember that you need to create a 'well' for the ink

Tidy up the edges.

Thermofax screens

I bought some thermofax screens both framed and unframed. You can pick from their ready-made range or send them an image to make up a custom screen. Their turnaround is impressive at just a day or two.

Making my own thermofax screen

I even looked into trying to make my own thermofax or similar type of screen. Here are a couple of links I found useful (spoiler: turns out thermofax machines are impossible to find and expensive):

• http://thermofaxconfidential.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/buying-thermofax-machine.html
• http://www.gericondesigns.com/weblog/?p=307

Enjoy your screen making.

Screen Printing

More progress from my class: my very first screen printing.

I'd always thought of this as a rather mystical, unobtainable technique that I would never experience. Only really expert artists made screen prints! And all those people who were doing Art while I had to do Latin at school.

This is what happened:

The prep work for the stencil and the cutouts from the stencil.

The stencil based on my bird theme.

My flight of birds across a piece of tie dye I'd made. I like this a lot.

Detail of the piece above showing the patterened texture of the fabric.

The flight across some patterned textile.

And again, trying to join more than one repeat of the stencil.

Overlaying the stencil with the cutouts.

Some serendipidous mixing up of colours having picked up left over pots from other classmates. One of my birds went AWOL (it stuck to the fabric on the previous pull and I didn't notice).

The back of the above piece has much neater and cleaner white spaces.

I'm not sure the sheer joy of indulging this technique comes across but I was like a kid in a sweet shop.

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This post is part of a series: see Part I -- see Part II -- see Part III -- this is Part IV
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Dyeing

We did some tie dyeing in my evening class. I really didn't enjoy it. It's messy and chemically. And I don't like the results. Reminds me too much of travelling through Guatemala in the 90s and the kinds of clothes the tourists were wearing. I don't like the regularity of the repeating patterns or muddiness of the colours.

Nevertheless here are the results.

Preparation - putting in the resists.

From my sketchbook - the results.

This one I liked - the way the red bleeds into the green rather randomly. I later overprinted it with some screen printing.

This was done by one of my classmates and I really like it because it's mostly the original fabric and the dye is irregular.

I'm not sure that I'll be doing much more dyeing but glad to have had a chance to find out I don't like it.

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This post is part of a series: see Part I -- see Part II -- This is Part III
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