Emily's Cup Cakes

Emily

Emily's Cup Cakes

Here is my delightful grand daughter, Emily. She is a very careful, deliberate worker. She understood the process completely, mixed her own colors and printed in perfect registration. Emily started with an original line drawing of her cup cakes that she enlarged to be the size of her finished print. She started by making a drawing fluid and screen filler stencil that included every area she would print any color. From that point on she made Future stencils within the screen filler one. First she made a stencil for the lighter yellow, extending it into the frosting area. She painted drawing fluid onto this area, dried it, spread Future, dried it, removed drawing fluid with cold water, dried it and printed each piece of white Stonehenge paper with her lighter yellow ink. Then she cleaned the ink from the screen with cold water, dried it and made a reduction stencil within the light yellow stencil by painting drawing fluid onto the folds of the bottoms of the cup cakes (the little triangular areas), spread Future, dried, removed the drawing fluid, dried and printed each print with a darker color. After that was completed she removed the Future with clear
ammonia and cold water, dried the screen and proceeded to make four more Future stencils, first the light green, then blue, then pink.The green cup cake has blue and pink speckles on it. The screen was cleaned with ammonia after each - except for the pink stencil.  After printing  pink she made a reduction stencil to print a raspberry color on the on the pink raspberry and on the speckles green cup cake. Emily made a print of each color to keep as a record as well as the original drawing.

Teaching again

Grace's print

My daughter and grand daughter were here last week. I always love having them here. They both decided that they would like to make screen prints. Grace is a scenic artist for the Metropolitan Opera and Emily will be taking printmaking when she goes back to Mt. Holyoke College next semester.They have both done some screen printing here with me before this. Grace found a landscape sketch in one of my art books to work from. She is so very different from her daughter in the way that they work. Grace used many Future stencils after her original one made with screen filler. Her color sense is so well developed! I just love her print which she titled "July - At Home". She left #1 here for her father - I have matted it and will find a nice frame for it.
 Tomorrow, I will show you what Emily did.                                                                        

The fourth color

I have laid out some of the finished prints for this photo. I particularly like

green

purple

the green and the purple ones. The green ones have a real Arts and Crafts look. And I have always loved purple.  So here is a photo with the fourth color. On most of the green backgrounds I printed just a touch of iridescent green.     I mixed Citrine and Blue Topaz Speedball Opaque Iridescent Ink to get an iridescent green that I love. On all of the other prints I used Metallic Copper Jacquard Screen Printing Ink. I had to add water to the Jacquard ink as it was very thick.


I have another photo on the right of the screen that shows all of the layers that went into making this print. I put it on my light box to take the photo. The open yellow areas are where the 4th color was printed
Below, I  show how I painted drawing fluid to make the stencil for the iridescent and metallic colors.

Drawing fluid on 4th stencil

Now the third color

Drawing fluid for the third color

Here is a photo of the third stencil that I am making for this reduction print. With the original design under the translucent screen, I painted everything that was to be the third color. I went right over the leaf forms in the corners and the center of the blossoms. I carefully painted the lines separating the petals and painted the area around the center.

I decided that black ink would be the right color for this step. When I printed the black on all of the background colors - I was so excited that I forgot to photograph this step. I'm sorry.

Four colors have been printed

Here is a print of the third color alone.

The Second Color

 The second color printed

The photo on the left shows the first and second colors printed. I had to let the yellow that is over the green dry and print them again to get the intense yellow that I wanted. Yellow is very translucent and will not easily cover a dark color. I printed all of the rest in two shades of an orange/tan. It looks completely different over the yellow from those printed on blue. I printed a few without the first color onto fawn Stonehenge paper.

The two photos below show how I created the second stencil within the same stencil that I used to print the first.

Drawing fluid on screen for second color

Stencil for second color

A Different Idea - For Me!

First stencil with image underneath

I have decided to try something different. When I am designing a print, I always have a good idea of just what the color scheme should be. I am thinking of another reduction print; the design will be almost abstract. I will try printing it in different colors.

 

First color printed

I can't seem to get away from representative images. The design on the left is of a blossom and its leaves, a nice dark and light composition, almost like a quilt pattern. I pasted up four of the images with the lighter blossoms in the center. Then I took  drawing fluid and painted the complete square. I left a good quarter of an inch all around the image. After the drawing fluid was dry I spread screen filler over the entire screen, let it dry and washed out the drawing fluid. Then I painted just a tiny dab of filler on the spots in the small ring around the center of the blossoms. After this was thoroughly dry, I mixed some ink and started printing. The first color that I printed was a medium green. I printed 20 of these on Stonehenge 100% rag paper that I had cut to size with my paper cutter. Some of it is white and some is Fawn. Then, I had to clean all of the ink from the screen and let it dry again before I could print the other colors. Luckily it is dry and hot outside - I took the clean screen outside, onto the deck to dry. Then I mixed a turquoise-blue color. I use a lot of the Dick Blick Inks. In the past, I always used Speedball - but I find the the Blick inks work just as well. I do revert to Speedball for transparent base, overprint varnish and wonderful iridescent colors like the purple that is shown here.

The Finished Print

Two reds, black and green printed

Here is the finished print. The colors in my scan don't do it justice. The reds are more red and the green is lighter when you see it in person.

Green printed alone

I painted screen drawing fluid onto the same screen that I had been using for the three other colors; light red, dark red and black. The drawing fluid was painted wherever I wanted to have green. This included the lines connecting the dark red squares and the stem and a little on the amaryllis.

When that was dry, I spread filler again over the screen, let it dry, washed out the drawing fluid and printed green as shown. This is a good way to make a print using just one screen. The registration needs to be set up just once and you can see the blocked areas on the screen and work from them. This is the method that I will be teaching in the Power House in October. I provide the screen  (and all of the other materials) for each student and eight screen are all that I can manage to bring with me. For more information about this class or to register click here.

 

Printing Black

The photo on the left shows drawing fluid that has been painted onto the screen for the black stencil. You can see pencil lines on the screen for the dark red squares that will be on the finished print. You are able to see the screen filler that I had painted on the screen for the dark red stencil in the earlier post.
After I completed the drawing fluid, checked it for pin holes and let it dry, I spread screen filler over the image - let that dry - washed out the drawing fluid - let it dry and I was ready to print with black Speedball Textile screen printing ink. It will cover both reds completely.

Black printed over reds

The photo on the left shows black ink printed over the two reds. If you click on the photo you will see it more clearly. The darker red shows in in the four squares and the lighter red is around the edge of the image.

The photo below is of black printed alone.

This will be a true reduction print - often called a suicide print - because you can never go back once you have started printing. Reduction refers to the fact that the stencil gets smaller each time you work on it. The next post will show the finished print with four colors. Two reds, black and green.

Black alone

The next step

A darker red has been printed

After cleaning the ink from the screen and letting it dry. Then, with my original sketch underneath, I painted screen filler directly on the screen wherever I wanted to keep the image light red. The white areas were already blocked out by the first stencil. I painted a small line of filler around the rectangular image so that it would be the lighter red..
I mixed process magenta and just a drop or two of black with red Speedball Screen Printing Textile Ink to get a rich darker red that will contrast with the lighter red. The result was the photo above.

Then each print was printed with this second red.
I was pleased with the result.

All have been printed two times

Steps in making a reduction print

original sketch

The first step was to make a sketch of the image that I wanted to print. This will be the actual size of the finished print. I scanned my sketch and centered and glue sticked  it onto a sheet of print paper (Stonehenge, 100% rag, in ivory, cut to 7 x 9 inches). This will go nicely into an 8 x 10 frame.

I placed the sketch on my screen bed and set registration guides. Then with the transparent screen lowered over the sketch, I painted the complete block of the print area with screen drawing fluid. That is a  water soluble fluid that acts as a resist to the blockout. A strip of mat board under the screen keeps the screen separated from the sketch.
I painted around the areas that would stay the paper color. Everything that is blue will be printed.

I rounded the corners of my print.

Registration is of primary importance in multicolored printing.

1.     It is not hard to achieve almost perfect registration by having the original image to be printed on a sheet of print paper that you have cut for the edition. It could be drawn right on the print paper or mounted onto a sheet of print paper with a glue stick.

2.     The image should appear about in the center of the screen.

3.     Tape the print paper onto the screen bed with a couple of pieces of masking tape.

4.     You will need three rectangles of cardboard for registration guides. The cardboard should be a just little thicker than the print paper. Cereal boxes and other packaging could be used.

5.     Use glue stick to cover one side of the cardboard guides.

6.     Place the guides onto the screen bed so that they butt up to the print paper at the ends of the longer side of the print paper.

7.     Put masking tape over the guides – not too close to the paper. You don’t want the tape to extend where the guide and the paper meet.

8.     Be sure that there is glue under the guide at the edge where it butts up to the paper so that the paper will not slide under when setting it in place for printing.

Every time that you put a sheet of print paper into the guides it will be in the right place for good registration.

This works for reduction printing with one screen and for prints made with multiple screens.

First color printed

I chose a light red for the first color. I mixed transparent base with red fabric screen printing ink directly from the jar.

Every piece of print paper was printed with this color. I will show you how I completed my print in future posts. 

I choose to make a reduction print as this will be what I will be teaching at the Power House in October. For more information about the class, click here.