Tex1 Ass 2 Project 5 Stage 4 Reflection points on printing

Do you feel you made a good selection from your drawings to use as source material for your design ideas? Which interpretations worked best? Why?

Yes and no. I am not sure I had the type of drawings in my store that suited developing repeat designs, which is why I tried out a design process on a picture of a rusty metal surface which became the stencil design. This worked well, and the negative images from the cut-outs from the stencil were even better, they were organic, fresh and felt quite balanced in the compositions I made.

Which fabrics did you choose? What particular qualities appealed to you?

When printing smooth surfaces work best. They allow the printing block, equipment or tool to leave defined marks, whereas heavier textured fabrics take print more loosely. That is also the case for painted fabrics when you have to pin down the surface before painting. I liked the shiny acetate for taking very fine detail, and its shiny surface was useful for reflecting light through the matt paint used in printing. If printing on pre-printed fabric I think you have to select a design very carefully to make sure the contrast does not clash and create an imbalance.

Is the scale of marks and shapes on your samples appropriate to the fabric? Would any of your ideas work better on a different type of fabric, for example, sheer, textured, heavyweight? Why?

Printing and painting on smaller samples seems to be just the first step, it does not always give a good impression of what a run of repeats for example would look and feel like if planned for use. I re-discovered monoprinting and this does not allow for repeats and tried it on different surfaces, a very light, almost translucent cotton, heavier cottons, a woven wool, the lighter (but not the lightest) cottons (and probably a firmly woven linen) were best suited for this.

The prints using foam blocks rendered only low reliefs so were best suited for very smooth fabrics, while painting on fabric can be done on a variety of weights. I like the calligraphic effect of painting with a dark colour, letting the brush almost dance over the surface like I did for the red silk samples. This worked well on lighter fabrics. 

Do the marks and shapes seem well placed, too crowded or too far apart? Were you aware of the negative shapes that were forming in between the positive shapes?

In the stencil marks the negative spaces were a bit too far spaced out. It was printed on a white cotton and so I felt something was missing and wanted to fill the white space with something, such as stitching. I have to admit I have not been looking at the negative spaces too much, although some of the better monoprints had an interesting balance between the location of marks and the areas that only reflected areas of dye, but this is not what is being asked for here.

There was more use of negative space in the large sample where I intentionally discharged some of the background fabric so that the varying shades would show through (negative) areas where I did not apply dye on the plate.

What elements are contrasting and what elements are harmonising in each sample? Is there a balance between the two that produces an interesting tension?

The design elements of softness (eg in stamping with foam, rolls of yarn, soft paper) contrasts with the stamps made of rubbers, lines painted or dragged with pointed tools. There are contrasts in colour - eg black lines on red, use of complementary colours and between coloured prints and black backgrounds.

Harmony is more achievable by using similar shapes such as round forms (in one print using different round tools such as toilet rolls and wine bottle corks), or similar dynamic lines (such as swirling lines in the red silk painting).

The sampling of the smaller work also definitely prepared this work, although I did not recreate any earlier designs. The smaller monoprints, the stamping, the painted bonding material all provided a bit of learning of how the prints would work.

Do the shapes and marks in your single unit sample relate well to the size and shape of the fabric? Do they make an interesting composition on this larger scale?

Yes, as I planned a seascape I placed the sea and sky on each half of the sample with a horizon line cutting through them. I wanted the image to fill the whole of the fabric space which is rectangular. Although I did consider whether I should make the sky the feature as I had done in a photograph.

The marks were free and loose to evoke ideas of clouds and waves, and I think this worked well. In the final sample I am quite satisfied with the sky. I have looked at it close, and thought maybe I should have sewn onto the sky section, but no, I left the print as it stands. The marks are painterly, but not painted directly onto the fabric ground. It might be thought that this could have been painted instead of printed – and would it have made much difference? I am not sure; I used the roller to create direction in the paint-dye, I scraped at the dye, dotted with a brush and then lay the fabric onto this. I think it gives a particular textiley surface rather than a painted one.
How successful do you think your larger sample is? Do you like the design? Have you recreated or extended your ideas from the smaller samples so that there is a visible development between the two?
I am glad I looked at Barbara Rae’s work for this one to take in a sense of mark making in a large way. I like the blues and greens, the sea and sky – the motif retains enough of a sensation of the air I felt over the summer by the sea.

 The sampling of the smaller work also definitely prepared this work, although I did not recreate any earlier designs. The smaller monoprints, the stamping, the painted bonding material all provided a bit of learning of how the prints would work

 

Tex 1 Ass 2 project 5 stage 4 - a larger sample

Late July

I have been pondering how to finish off on a high with this assignment, having enjoyed the colour and design work, but struggled with the printed work. I have revisited Barbara Rae's work, as her landscapes are full of life, colour, energy, and I see her free improvised style as something that resonates with how I work as well. The book I used was Barbara Rae Sketchbooks, Royal Academy of Arts, 2011.

I went for a bit of a holiday to a place I feel strongly about and thought perhaps having Rae's work in mind whilst looking at the large skies over the sea where I was might inspire me.

 

 

 

I had also done just a few holiday sketches sitting on the beach, a couple at sunset, and one of the coastline.

 

 

So, having thought about this a while during my holiday abroad I decided to do a printed-painted landscape. I approached it a bit more systematically than I had the sampling sessions earlier in the project.

I thought perhaps it was better to think about layering various printed and painted mark making approaches, and started off by creating two bunches of small samples. The first one was using bleach to fade out painted areas.

 

This was useful, as it showed how different fabrics reacted differently to the discharge fluid (bleach) - some very well - the top two, which were respectively acetate and a poly-cotton, and less so the other two, below, a heavier grey cotton and a darkish green poly-cotton. The acetate bleaches almost instantly and the fluid runs quickly, so it is difficult to control the brush marks suing bleach on this fabric. A fifth piece was a wonderful piece of lining fabric I found in a charity shop (a small corner of it is showing to the right): a light-weight fabric in a good blue, made in Japan, which I thought perhaps might be silk, but it did not fade at all despite heavy application of bleach. So it is more likely to be a synthetic, but of a good quality. I had already decided I would probably use the acetate. It is has body somehow, whilst being a smooth and slightly precious looking fabric. It took print very well during early sampling, and despite being a pale green I think with prints in blue, white and blue-greens, and possibly a bit of brown, it will be a useful background for a seascape.

 

The second set of small samples were to test printing and painting on the same set of fabric types.

 

Here I liked the grey cotton, which was painted with blue and white mixed to varying degrees. Of course the sky would not be a summer sunny sky, but it looks good as a post-thunderstorm sort of sky. The pale green acetate still worked well, and the monoprint lay comfortably on all samples as they had smooth surfaces. I have not tried to print on top of the bleached samples and will just go for that for the final piece (I have a bit more of the acetate left if the print-on-faded-areas does not work as well as I am hoping. This is part of working experimentally, so it will just have to be tried, to see if it works.

 

In the end I printed three large samples, of which one was chosen as the final piece. First I bleached out areas on the fabric pieces for the two halves - one with waves the other cloudy:

 

 

The lower one shows how the bleach slipped off the brush and left the marks from the fluid - this would not matter too much as the print would be placed on top of this.

 

There were also two 'what was left on the pallet' prints, which I used to print the left-overs, ghosts, from the plates of the larger one. In printing first the sky, there was little to worry about with regard to registration with other printing, but when I came to print the 'sea' section it was much more difficult to hold the fabric to accurately place it on the plate. In one case there was a bit of overlap of the print, but this actually does not look too bad.

 

Once both the sea and sky sections had been printed covering the whole of the fabric, I fixed the fabric paint and left it a while as I needed to make the horizon distinct and needed to think about this a while. In the end I made a simple print on the horizon of two of the larger pieces, just using a strip of cardboard which I textured by scratching the surface.

 

Here's the final sample:

 

 

The final piece was then applied with waves in painted bonding material and embroidered waves of different sizes. The sky was left without stitching as the print was quite strong in itself, and I do not like to over-work the surface when it is not needed. Finally the piece was made stronger by ironing on Vilene and it was sewn onto a piece of blue cotton to bring out the blue in both the top and the bottom sections of the picture.

 

 

 

Hopefully this detail shows the bonded paint and the embroidery. Unfortunately photographic pictures distort colouring - I used greeny-blues and a bit of brown for the sea that was dark, but also gave it a warm feel, which is not so clear here, where the blue and brown dominate. The horizon line was a stamped section using distressed cardboard. This worked well, it created a clear line and with a little embroidery to indicate softer outlines of wooded land it evoked what I saw in the distance.

 

I also hope that the effect of the monoprint is visible - the plate is smooth, you roll out dye-paint, work in textures by scraping or some other way of mark making. When smoothing out the fabric over the print plate the dye may be pulled a bit, and that adds to the effect sometimes. This makes the printed marks very complex and in this case was useful as waves may at times be even but in the sea there is so many effects from currents, different depths of water that the surface is rippled and light fractures in different directions.

 

As a sample this final thing is reasonable, it does not claim to be a finished piece and was a useful exercise for showing how printing-painting can work with the substance of the fabric surface.

 

What was left on the print plate?

 

Three sections of sky 'ghost' prints were printed on top of each other. I then added a bit of painted sea and printed a coast line using distressed card.

 

 

The other was a sample with three levels of 'ghost' prints of the sea sections:

 

 Both these samples will be used for further work at some point, not yet sure what for though.