My local group met today to do some silk screening. We did deconstructed screen printing, printing through screens made with blue school glue, oatmeal printing and scrap paper printing. We also tried screen printing with a screen prepared with watercolor crayons and then used textile medium to screen through the crayons. These were a bit of a disappointment but all the others worked great. I was so into the screen printing that I forgot to take many photos of the process.

These four photos show the deconstructed screens. The one in the top left corner has bubble wrap under it and I’m screening the thickened dye on to the screen. The other three photos are screens that have already dried. We then screened either clear print paste or another color dye through this and the dried dye breaks down differently with each pull.

After I made the screen there was dye left on the bubble wrap so I used it to print on to some sketch book pages.

These four photos above show are printed from the paper lamination screens that I made last week. I used printing ink on to sketch book pages. The pages with a different background color were already painted or printed previously.

These two pieces were printed with the watercolor crayons and textile medium. The one on the left was previously printed with peppers.

The photos above show printing with the blue school glue screen. You can see the screen itself in the middle of the top row of photos. The pink one on the bottom left was previously printed on a gel plate. I’m not sure it was much improved.

This one was one of Sally’s that had been previously printed with vegetables (red) and then a deconstructed screen in green was done over top. I’ll be interested to see how this one looks when it’s washed.

These are more deconstructed prints, the top row is on paper and the bottom on fabric.

Here is Sally mixing up some more print paste with purple dye. On the right you can see how messy it gets, dye and print paste seem to end up everywhere.

This piece is one of Louise’s. She had rust dyed a piece of watercolor paper. But she thought it needed more. So we added an oatmeal screen print. The really dark green bits are oatmeal that have soaked up the green dye. The oatmeal acts as a resist on the screen and after it dries, you usually peel off all the oatmeal bits to show what is underneath. Louise hasn’t decided whether she’ll keep the oatmeal or take it off. Can’t wait to see how she develops this further.

These last two are more paper screen printed with the oatmeal resist technique. This is raw oatmeal, in case you were wondering. Sally also printed an entire scarf with this method but I didn’t get a photo. I will have to take more photos once everything has been batched and washed.  We had a wonderful day and I’m looking forward to next month so I can see how everything turned out. I have a few pieces of fabric that I’ll show you later this week when I get them washed out.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend.