Studio Brief 1: One Week Book - Screen Printing & Final Book

Screen Printing

The screen printing final stage of this brief was great fun. From mixing our two chosen colours to exposing our screens and learning how to use the screen printing tables and frames. It sure was a messy job with tons of cleaning, but it really helped open my eyes to how and why professionals use this process to create artwork and products in bulk.

Our group took it in turns to print, using our registration marks to help line up the second colour with the first. 
For me, an important realisation was that to create a successful print, it is beneficial to print the lighter colour first, then have the darker colour on top. If it had been the other way around, the lighter colour would not have come out so clearly as it would not have shown up on top of the darker colour...should the colours overlap in anyway.

Final screen printed page

The Final Hotdog Book

Front cover 

Pages 1 & 2

Pages 3 & 4

Pages 5 & 6

Back page

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Successes

Working as a group this week was great fun. We all pulled our weight, got on and collaborated well and although our styles are very different when it comes to artwork, I feel the book flows really well, conveys a story and each page compliments the next.

I found decision making as part of a group a lot easier than I thought it would be. I struggle to make decisions when on my own with just myself to battle with and question, but having others to discuss my ideas with and help come to a final outcome made the process a lot more fun and I was able to take myself and artwork a lot less seriously...which helped me considering the speedy timeframe of this brief and how slow I usually work.

I really enjoyed the research part of this task, and although I hadn't made it on the actual trip to our given location - I feel the self-directed research that I did in the beginning contributed to the task in a big way and helped create a strong theme for our book as a whole.

Failures

The printing process!!! I am such a perfectionist but because I knew little about screen printing, I became so frustrated when the green layer of colour came through patchy in our prints and I couldn't fix it. Looking back on this issue as a group, we came to the conclusion that the green paint & medium was too think so it wasn't being transferred through the screen cleanly. Its a shame because I feel like I never got a "perfect print" in the finishing stages despite trying my hardest. Maybe that is the nature and charm of screen printing...nothing is completely perfect!?

Once our prints had dried and we assembled our books we realised that the pages were in the wrong order! The inside 6 pages were meant to be character - stall, character - stall, character - stall, however two characters had ended up next to each other...ooops! This wasn't exactly a failure as I don't feel it took away from the book or the story we were trying to tell...but it was a layout error that we hadn't planned on.

Overall this has been a great task and I now feel I have a secret developing love for screen printing. It has always been this amazing but untouchable thing in my eyes (I haven't had access to any type of printing since my foundation days) and I would love to get better at it as this is a direction in which I would like my professional practice to lead. Spending my free time in the the screen print studios is a must for 2015 - such an inspiring place to be and it can't hurt to master a new (but important) skill.