5th Feb Print Room

This week I focussed on doing more devoré on silk and trying it on the jersey cotton. To get a more interesting effect, I tried applying the paste directly with the sqeedgee rather than through the screen. It took a lot longer to dry, but from the baked appearance of the sample the texture should come through. Also it was a quick and easy way to create stripes.

I also pigment printed on top of the devoré from earlier. The pale colour of the fabric meant that my colours showed more accurately and the overall mood is lighter. This allowed me to see the pigment properly; when dealing with the darker fabric I will re-mix it so a similar effect is achieved. 

I am considering layering the thinner silk with the thicker suede; the orange colour shows slightly through the devoré and adds a richness to the colour palette.

Mon 3rd Feb Tutorial and Print room

Tutorial

The overlapping effect in my print room samples works well; I should try this more deliberately with stripes or large plain shapes in the background and layer the colour on top, 2, 3 or more times. The pigments aren't showing well on darker fabrics and are coming out dull; I can modify my photoshop colours to reflect this.

My Tigerprint competition entries started to show how my colours work together and the stripes contributed to a 3D effect that was interesting. I could make stripes out of my motifs to use as backgrounds for my locations photoshop designs.

For all photoshop samples that I print out on paper I should include material samples of the fabric the designs would be printed on.

For the origami book that will hold images of my designs (a mini catalogue) it should be small enough to remain an object but large enough to show detail; I need to prototype this to find the optimal size.

Print Room

The jersey cotton didn't dye well previously, because it was bathed in too small a jug. I re-dyed it beige, this time in a 5 litre jug. The effect was more even and produced a deeper shade. This should provide a good base for pigment printing.

Taken on 5th Feb, after devoré paste was applied and baked

I also applied devoré paste to my dyed yellow silk/viscose through my screen motifs. The first time I followed the instructions given to us in the workshop, that thin fabric only needs 2 screen pulls to absorb the paste. Replicating this had no effect at all on my fabric. Alice suggested using 10 pulls, as this had worked well on her previous samples. I tried it and the results were much better. Baking with a hot iron took a while, and removing the burned fibres from my 2 samples took about an hour; this fabric has very little pile so it's difficult to separate them out.

First screen prints

Using  the poly suede and pigment dyes I started to layer up images with my motifs. The fabric is quite dark, so the dyes weren't showing up that well. I added more white opaque to the lighter colours, which helped a little. When the motifs are layered up the 'correct' colour shows up, and I quite like the effect of a paler colour with occasional flashes of colour. I might exploit this by painting stripes of the pale colour onto a suede square, then start layering motifs on top to give a more structured, intentional feel to the effect. This image has been altered in photoshop so it is clearer to view online. The colours are more muted in the actual sample.

V for Victory sample

The goggles are compiled in the shape of a grenade, and work quite well. They help the sample to feel busy, but because they are arranged in a specific shape the eye can read them as one motif. This breaks the sample up into busy and quiet sections, as intended.

Bold goggles motifs contrast with the blurred buckles

Tigerprint

I decided to enter the Tigerprint Competition for January, which involved producing 5 surface pattern designs for a range of their everyday products, including cards, wrapping paper and bags. I used my current colour palette, and a mixture of motifs from this project and my Tron project to make fairly unisex design solutions that are still colourful to reinvent the stripe and show one floral design.

First day back in the print room

Today I prepared my fabric and colours for printing. The A4 and more store at uni had 2 shades of poly suede that matches my colour palette well and is £1.65 a metre, so I decided to get some to pigment print on. It reminds me of my grandpa's satchels and its low cost is appropriate for a war time theme, where rationing applied and the government restricted sale of clothing.

left: lighter suede, top middle: darker suede, bottom middle:
reverse side of light suede, right: back of darker suede

The darker suede matches Epaulette Red and the lighter suede Satchel Brown

It took a while to get the correct tones of pigment to print with, but colour is so important in forming a cohesive collection that I thought it time well spent. I added opaque white to the pigment binder, so hopefully the colours will look almost the same as they do in the pots when printed onto the dark coloured fabric from the store. I tried to make a wide range of colours so that my samples will be interesting and encompass the different moods related to 'sinister vintage'.

I also dyed my own fabric, choosing lighter colours made from sand beige and durazol yellow direct dyes. The fabric is suitable for devoré, which I intend to try next.

To achieve a light enough shade of yellow on some silk/viscose georgette, I followed the print department's recipe, and left the 3 pieces of fabric in the dye for just 2 minutes, 4 minutes and 5 minutes.

Jersey cotton was left in the beige dye for 25 minutes, but the effect was extremely subtle, and slightly uneven. This 'unprofessional' uneven look was intended, to mirror the aged worn appearance of war time clothes now.

Other Artists' Work

Alex suggested I have a look at David Bomberg's work. Breaking with pre- first world war convention he combined cubism and futurism with a limited, bold colour palette to make vibrant work with a lot of movement to it. His colour palette is very similar to mine, and he produces the kind of energy I am aiming for. If anything his colours are more subdued, so it might be worth revisiting my palette to make them slightly more sombre.

Ju Jitsu 1914

The Mud Bath 1914

In The Hold, 1913-14

Another artist who made bold paintings around the same time was Christopher Nevinson; below is one of his preparatory sketches for 'Returning to the Trenches' from 1914-15. The swinging legs of the soldiers resemble the 'seven' motif I formed from the numbering inside my Grandpa's cap from the war. The are angular and striking and again show movement.

Tutorial 28th Jan

This week I did some more drawing and collage in book - like sections taken out of a small sketchbook. I like them as objects, and they remind me of the soldiers' personal possessions displayed in the Imperial War Museum. Alex suggested incorporating this into the presentation of my project, as I did with my photographs of origami boxes in Unit X last year; it would be an interesting way to show my designs. Smaller versions of them would work well; a larger book wouldn't have the right feel to it.

I also produced motifs from my earlier drawings, and acclimatised myself to working in repeat in photoshop, which resulted in a range of different effects. I tried to use a variety of drawings as a basis for motifs; bold vs worn-looking ones, some produced with pencil, others pen, and then edited them in photoshop so that they were different sizes and arrangements.

Motifs from drawings of epaulettes, a helmet, and jacket material were repeated in a stripy pattern. They now remind me of biscuits or sweets. This is appropriate for a war time theme; sweets, like the soldiers were not part of normal British life. Home baking is also part of the traditional 'vintage' theme; here it is 'sinister vintage'. I intend to experiment with colour, using a 'military' colour palette, 'vintage' colour palette and mixture of the two, taken from my narrowed selection of colours.

 To make a more obvious statement about 'sinister vintage' and to fit in with the idea of arranging images together from 'Amelie', I assembled the above gun shape from the pretty, flower-like designs based on my grandpa's helmet.

For my photoshop designs I would like to make more motifs from my second batch of drawings, so that they will be more varied.