Assignment 2 : Screen Printing Progress

I've started printing and decided on a more monotone colour scheme to allow the images to speak for themselves rather than letting colour dictate the setting and story. I chose to create atmospheric perspective by starting with light gray in the background of the trees, then moving forward to dark grey and finally black in the foreground to bring things into detail. The only other colour I am thinking of adding is blue for the will o' the wisps and the elk to add a slight glow effect to the more magical elements of the narrative. 

First few layers of screen printing

I used tabs to make sure that all my prints are identical which saves a lot of time in the printing process and helps to avoid mistakes. 

I aim to get as much printing done in only a few sessions so to achieve that I am not fully washing my screen between layers and instead am covering unprinted areas of the screen with news print and tape and then printing the area I do need on all my paper. Then I am using a damp paper towel to wipe any ink of the screen and to prevent blockages and then changing the area of the screen covered by newsprint and immediately printing the next layer. This is only possible if I fully wipe the printed area of the screen clean and because the ink dries so fast on the paper I can move onto the next layer in the same session. Each layer of trees took maybe 30 minutes to print before moving onto the next layer and the ink was already dry on the paper. 

Screen printing set up

At the end of this printing session where I printed the three layers of trees in 3 colours, I did colour tests to see if I could desaturate the colours in the studio but found it difficult to get consistent coverage without the colour becoming too saturated. I decided at this point to only print the characters in black and the elk with blue over black to create a little bit of a magic aura. I did talk to Mary-Anne about using a very small amount of ink to mix the colours I knew I wanted but that is not allowed and she wasn't ok with making an exception which was very understandable as she was concerned that everyone would then want to mix colours if they saw that I had.

Colour tests to decrease saturation

I did do a couple test prints with the double layers with gray and colour to desaturate the characters but because the detail of the book is too small any misalignment at all would lead to the magenta becoming too vibrant for what I wanted. I also didn't have the time or money to purchase my own inks at this point. I decided to move on with my original plan of black ink for the characters allowing negative space around the act as the thing that makes them stand out rather than colour. 

Test prints of colour alignment