Screen Printing

The past 8-10 weeks have been really intense, to say the least. We had to aim for quality in every single bit of our work. For my latest project, there were both quanlity AND quantity. Have been working on my final project and port folio for at least 8 hours per day, easily reaching 12 hours and beyond in the last month. Stress levels were at its all time high during mid semester but they were managed by lots of planning. 

I plan and write down what I need to do for the day/ week pretty much every day, up to 2-3 times a day. A little excessive really. But it really does make you feel SO good every time you finish and cross each item off. I could have easily crossed off (or rather vigorously inking them till I couldn't even see the words) more than 150 (detailed) items in the past week. Planning has been keeping me on track and helped me work methodically for the past one month or so. 

In this post I just wanted to share a bit of my process. I've been in and out of the printing lab for the past two weeks. It's a place that I love and sometimes hate. I hate it when things don't work my way, especially when certain tedious and time consuming processes had to be repeated just coz something that was out of your control went wrong. That happened quite a few times to me. Felt like screaming coz everyone was running on strict deadlines. 

Another thing I could hate is colour mixing and testing. Testing colours could easily take an entire day. And when all work is finished and the printed fabric was taken to be steamed or heat pressed, the colours might darken/ lighten or worse, turn yellower/ greener etc. That happened to me. But there wasn't time to redo coz it could mean repeating a day or week's worth of work, depending on how many colours went wrong. 

What I do love about screen printing is, despite all that could go wrong which you might have to painfully repeat, the results can be absolutely amazing. Even better than digital printing in some cases. Not to mention the fun part of printing. Love it!!

Seems like this would be my last time ever that I'd be screen printing in my life. I just can't see when or where else I could hand print design work apart from uni and this is already the last week of my course. 

So here are a few shots of me screen printing and what I've been up to. 

 Colour mixing with pigments. A process very much like mixing a cake batter using a spatula.
Colours here look so good and yummy!

 Hosing off the screen after exposing designs with intense UV light, which allows the exposed areas to harden and the unexposed areas to be easily washed off  from screen

 Me holding a squeegee about to print. This shot was from last sem's work but
thought I shouldn't miss out a shot on printing in this post

 My final project! Very folk-inspired ;) About to be made into a cushion

 A tea towel design printed on natural linen

 First time printing my design on decal paper...

...and transferring them onto ceramic!! Fiddly but fun process!

Will show more of my illustrations and finished products of this project, which I've named Folkå :)