This week I began my silkscreen printing journey. I am drawn to the mode of printmaking for my thesis because the form itself uses layers to express forms. The idea of layering fits nicely into my ideas about the generational patterns of land use. The patterns of our history are physically layered on the landscape.

I thought that when I began these pieces I would begin by working with the same photographs and digital textures that I am using to create the digital collages in my Faces and Places series. But at the urging of and with the encouragement of Maja to bring the work of my hand to these pieces I decided that I would attempt to make a print by painting directly on the transparency with an India ink.

I know that much of my work can tend to be too tight so I intentionally chose to work on top of an unfinished sketch as a reference and I tried to keep my brushwork loose and not try and make each color field match precisely. Below are two of the three transparencies that I have painted so far:

Today I was able to gain access to the print studio and burn my first screen and pull my first print. Below is the result on newsprint:

I have to reburn this screen because I did not leave enough room at the bottom to contain the ink from flooding and printing on the screen. That’s okay because I’ll remember to plan for this on all of my other screens. I had in my mind as I worked with this piece the Asian inspired prints of the Impressionists. I plan to go back and review the prints of Mary Cassatt - my linework is much heavier than hers.

As I planned the composition I was trying to create shapes/voids that would leave openings for me to play with textures and materials and explore that idea of layering. At home in the evening away from the studio I decided to scan these transparencies and create another digital collage using a similar process to my other pieces. You can see the result below and read more about this piece on my Faces and Places project page.

The one advantage of this digital process was that I was able to clean up a couple of smears of ink and also correct the brow line which I felt was much too heavy. Here is my first iteration of this composition: