New Screens

I sent off thirteen new screen designs to my friend Lynn Krawczyk, who will do her magic on them and turn them into Thermofax screens for me. I used an iPad app called MirrorPaint to create these designs.

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The Screens Arrived!

The dozen silk screens I ordered from Lynn Krawczyk arrived last night and I've spent the whole morning playing with them.

I know that silk screening is "nothing new" to a lot of people, but being able to work so easily and effectively with perfect renditions of my own images is a new thrill to me.

Let me first say that Lynn was absolutely awesome through this process. When I started talking to her about Thermofax screens, I knew very little about how to create clear, crisp imagery to burn onto the screens, and knew only a little more about how to actually use the finished screens.

 

She took a huge amount of time in educating and guiding me and now that I've had a chance to play with these beauties, I am even more grateful to her for being so meticulous.

To give myself plenty of time to practice, I started with paper that had previously been painted.

Back in my painting days, I off-loaded a lot of paint from my brushes, palette knives, stencil materials and stamps onto many sheets of paper.

I saved all those "neutral" background papers, knowing that one day more could be done to them to make them interesting and useable.

While these prints are hardly art, I can see many of them being used in my collage work.

I used both the Tulip Screen Printing Paints Lynn sent along (thank you, Lynn!) and some of my own Versatex screen printing ink.

I was particularly fond of the fine-tipped squeeze top on the Tulip paints... they made it very easy to squeeze the paint out into the duct tape well (thoughtfully provided by Lynn) in small, controllable amounts.

I used a large palette knife from the hardware store to pull the prints.

One of the things I found really important to keep in mind was something Lynn had told me about using screens that contain a lot of very fine lines: use a gentle touch! She was absolutely right.

I also found it really important to not only keep tight control of the angle at which I held my palette knife as I pulled the print, but also to watch the bead of ink rolling under the knife to make sure I didn't lay the ink down too quickly.

I needed to be sure I didn't smoosh too much paint down into those fine lines, or the whole image would have blurred.

While I didn't dawdle too long (thereby not allowing the ink to dry on the screen), I didn't rush the process either.

Next to my elbow, I kept a shallow, flat container of water about two inches deep. When I was done with a screen, I laid it flat in the water and swished it around a little to make sure it was fully submerged.

This kept the inks and paints that remained in the screens from drying out  until I could take them all to the sink at once and wash them.

Never let ink or paint to dry in a screen because it will clog the mesh of the screen, making it impossible to use again.

When I was finished with my printing session, I took all the screens to the sink and washed them very gently with a soft sponge, some dish detergent and cold water.

I'm totally hooked, and I can see myself using these again and again for years to come, as well as spending a lot more time, effort (and money) to create and use even more screens in the future.

Happy creating!

Lynn Krawczyk And A Silk Screen Give-Away!

The Fibra Artysta, Lynn Krawczyk and I, after recently discovering we'll be taking the same workshop at Fabrications Retreat this year, have put our heads together to offer my blog readers a special give-away.

Lynn is launching a new Etsy shop specifically to offer her services in helping the rest of us create beautiful Thermofax silk screens based on our own photographs and sketched imagery. She is also offering her own screen images for sale, as well as a large variety of silk screen paints.

Lynn will be giving away one Thermofax silk screen and one bottle of paint to use with it to a reader of this blog! To enter, all you have to do is comment on this post before noon (Central Time) on Tuesday, July 20th. At that time, I'll use a random number generator to pick a name from the list of comments, and send that info off to Lynn. (((Please be aware that if your name is drawn but you have your blogging email turned off and haven't provided a way for us to contact you, we will have no way to reach you and will have to draw a second name to win the screen and paint!)))

I myself will be ordering twelve screens from Lynn and spent a lot of time pestering her in email about the best way to prepare my images in order to achieve clear, crisp prints.

Lynn suggests starting with a .jpg image at 300dpi...

and then using a Photoshop Elements filter called "stamp" (or whichever filter is offered on your chosen graphics program) to convert your images to black and white...

And since I wanted just the flower and none of the area around it, I took out the background and thickened the outline...

Remember, the black ares of the screen are what will burn away and that is the image you will get when you screen it onto fabric or paper! If you find you have too much black in your image, you can try the "invert" filter and it will switch the white with black and the black with white.

Because I'm addicted to chaotic abstract imagery, I'm focusing my attentions there when creating most of my designs. These are some images I created, taken from my own photographs and drawings, that I'll be having turned into screens.

Good luck to all the give-away entrants!!