With the mountain of uni work I've still yet to tackle, i attempted to add another new brief to the selection of individual briefs that i'd already completed, and this one involved having to jump back into the unforgiving jaws of the screen print studio, as it was/is a competition involving only hand-printed artwork.
Now, bearing in mind my not altogether successful history in making high-standard screen prints this seemed a tad ambitious,but i felt i hadn't really produced much work for the individual side of this module and should do more, i also saw it as a chance to get back on the horse, and make something. i also genuinely felt i could pull off something decent to submit. As there was no set theme, i had a look back at some of the past work i'd produced up to this point, that i'd done nothing with, and was just in one of my old sketchbooks waiting for rejuvenating.There's plenty of stuff i'd made with the intention of taking to print, analogue or digital, but never got around to it, but i came across a number of tribal mask designs i did as part of my visual language module.
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| Original Sketch |
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Illustrator version w/textures
and gradients |
They were made in illustrator, so needed simplifying and a certain amount of re-working in order to make them screen print ready, but though they'd be perfect for attempting a 3- colour print with, on a black or dark stock. Again, something i'd never done before, probably not the best idea to it try out for a competition, but i've been keen to try out more colours for a while and this design seemed pretty straight forward, so why not!?
Once i'd made them as stripped down as i thought it warranted (i still wanted it to be a bit challenging and not look to simple), i played around a few colour variants, based on my research into the Pantone spring colour trends. I was trying to make a more subtle colour scheme as opposed to the quite loud & contrasty palettes i usually use in my work. Wanting to avoid including any thick black outlines or having to use black paint, i placed the mask onto dark background colours to get a feel of how it would look printed onto a coloured stock. Another challenge in itself as, putting too much medium into your paint will result in wishy washy, 'see-through' layers, but putting too much in will result in the paint drying out on my screen. Usually this would've been risky enough for me to either just stick to what i know(ish) and print it onto white stock, or just to give it a miss altogether.
ABOVE: Oogah 'Frozen Peach' variants. BELOW: Oogah 'Ketchup & Mustard' version. Although i really liked the brightness of the red & yellow, i considered what the audience may be more likely to go for and opted to go with the 'softer' palette.
Once onto the studio phase, the story has a familiar & equally frustrating plot, which I'm bored with having to write about, and I'm sure whoever's reading this is bored of having to read on & on about it! (refer back to any of my previous screen print outings for details) So i'll leave it at that.
IN SUMMARY
• Main flaw, and ultimately the factor that has ballsed up my day of work up, and submission - i over compensated for just how much the paint medium would reduce the opacity of the paint once printed onto black paper, and didn't put enough in, resulting in the 2nd layer of colour (limpet shell) drying onto my screen soon after my first pull. The addition of water spray helped somewhat, but the pulls were inconsistent, blotchy and unsatisfactory.This was after the white layer, which i had initial fears over, came out reasonably well. Final layer of peach colour was an absolute zinger, but the damage was done by then.
• Having to mix a colour from scratch means its hard to gauge just how much paint you've used in ratio to medium, as you're only adding little bits at a time to get a close colour match.Another steep learning curve, but I don't seem to be learning.
• Although i'd included trapping, i could've done with more as it was hard to register perfectly, and the paint as drying as i was taking too long to line up the paper with the kodatrace.
• Matching the colours ones id made onscreen one success form the day - once printed they came out pretty much exactly how id wanted. Ive no ideas how i'd be able to re-create them, another annoying aspect of screen printing some may say 'unique' thing. its not, its annoying. I'll never be able to get that shade of peach again!
• Didn't really want to make a3 prints of this design, as i think it would've been suited to an A4 or similar size - but didn't really have the time to knock up something totally new for this competition.
At the end of the day, I'm not sure i even created any prints that i'd be at all happy about submitting, or even selling, once again. However, after sleeping on it and having a look at the dried prints tomorrow i'll make a final decision. Looking at the OnPaper website and the sort of submissions they had last year, i can see that the art of thing I've been making isn't something their judges would really consider, either in style or level of craft. Examples I've seen involve a lot of technical print production knowhow that i have no clue of. This is something i probably should've checked out before starting this whole process - but i guess on the positive side it's got me making things with my hands, and making (all the) mistakes again, away from the safety of the computer - but maybe i need to face up to the fact that I'm a digital designer. It's what I'm good at. I should concentrate being that rather than trying to make my work 'desirable' by screen printing it (badly) by hand.
Aghh. It could've /should've been so much better, but i'll resist all urges to go back into the studio and have a last ditch go at it again. I've got more pressing matters at large - but will return for more of these i think, as i say, on a smaller scale i think would work. Add it to the long list of creative things I've got planned but will never find time to see out!
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** UPDATE **
After picking up the dried prints this morning, it's a resounding NO to be being able to summit any of these prints. Sections of them are ok, great in fact, super clean & opaque - but they've all got massive blemishes/errors on them that have rendered them unusable, and that's not just me being over critical of my work. I wouldn't be comfortable letting any one see these, so it looks like the guillotine for the lot of them, unless i somehow manage to make some sort of mash-up piece using the good parts from a few different prints.But that's not going to happen. It was a simple enough design to execute, and it needed to be done well, but it really hasn't been, and i don't want to waste any more time or money ( on submission fee) on entering such an amateurish looking entry.
Looking at the pile of mangled prints i can see that I've over considered the colour overlaying aspect of this piece and tried to be too clever with the trapping. In fact if i hadn't used as much trapping,and just printed the colour layers directly over the top of each other the colours would have been more vibrant- as opposed to printing directly onto the black stock, which causes the saturation of the pigment to lowered, as you can see on the pic below.
Close up example of misjudgment of 'trapping' between the layers.
These are more lessons i can take from this latest disappointment and convert into a positive and come back wiser next time (you'd hope), which weirdly, I'm still eager to do as soon as possible. I don't like going to bed with the feeling of defeat ,although i know i can't return to the challenge just yet as I've got so much else on my plate.
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** FURTHER UPDATE**
Despite what i said 24 hours ago, i had a change of heart - (not in regards the prints i'd done, they're no use to anyone, can't deny that.) but i after having a clear out of my uni plan chest in the studio, it occurred to me that i had a pile of old prints that are just sitting there, (because theres not enough 'up to standard' ones to sell) - but a few of them i'm actually satisfied enough with the final results to show the general public, in particular the original a3 version of my Murakami 'Whisky Business' print. It would need a bit of trimming around the edges ( to make it 30x40) if it made it to the the final group of considered prints for the exhibition, but I'm determined to get some love for this bloody design if it kills me. It's way better the 30x30 digital version that i'd wish i'd never made, plus it's pretty much the best attempt at screen printing I've done to date, so figured it could be worth a shot. The entrants all get featured on the website for, so a bit of promotion (at least) will be the reward.
Print submission
Fingers crossed that i don't have to add this the 'red cross' list with along with Secret 7" & co..!
