Dissolving...

'Refresh'

 With my screen and equipment all sorted I dove right into project #2. Draw directly on the screen with water soluble crayons and pencils. Flood the screen with transparent base. Let it sit and dissolve for 5-ish minutes. Pull the impression. Clean the squeegee and pull until it transfers as much as possible. Done!

Left: The abstract was my first attempt. I happened to have some old Staedtler watercolor crayons that had been sitting in my room for 15 years probably. Ha! I wasn't sure if they would work so I went for something loose design-wise and thickly layered to test the limits. Turned out way better than I expected. Vivid and almost exactly as it looked on the screen. Some of the topmost black never transferred, but it was a good first test.

'Callas'

 Right: Spent a little more time on this one. I've wanted to do something with calla lilies for a long time. My mom likes them and I worked on it with her in mind. She likes purples, too, so that's the color scheme. I was a bit floored with how nicely it printed. Didn't lose much pigment. There was a little dry area in the top right that needed a little help. Otherwise... I like!

The process uses/wastes a huge amount of transparent base. One way to get a little extra mileage out of it is to swipe the leftover base (which is laced with dissolved crayon) over the screen and pull an impression. It makes some cool marbling effects. This last little square is a section of one I took. I got a few different ones. They'll be fun to draw over and use as backgrounds in various things.

Project #3 is back to paper stencils. We'll do a 3-color transparent piece. The transparent layers will form 7 total colors. One stencil each for the primaries: magenta, yellow, blue. Overlap will create orange, green, violet, and black. It's a little tricky because the colors are really similar in value. Yellow blends with the white of the paper. The orange is more like red-orange and blends with magenta. Blue and green are really close and the violet and mixed black are almost indiscernible. I spent a bunch of time in photoshop trying to figure out what to do. Ended up surrendering to a geometric thing, which isn't very original, but if I'm quick with printing it I can do something else. Spent about 6 hours today making design masters and cutting the yellow and magenta stencils out of mylar. My hand hates me right now... like... we're not on speaking terms. Lulz. It was already cranky from drawing with crayons, but whew. I know my neck is gonna feel completely crap, too. Fun. ^^

Ciao.

First screen shots...

Oooh! Pretty colorssssss!

 It hasn't rained more than a light sprinkle since the robin-fest. It's like late spring... continuously. Sunny. Warm. It's easily the warmest winter I've ever experienced. The ankle is improving, but still hurts. Now I feel like I have an alien foot. For the first time in 25 years I can't flex or point my foot without pain/limitation. Super weird.

After the first run of paper stencil prints we've just been preparing our own screens and equipment, which is quite an intensive process. I've just finished everything, as of yesterday. Next week I'll start project #2, which is a bunch of monotypes with water-soluble crayons/pencils. Should be interesting and colorful and the subject is completely open, so I might end up with six or more different prints along with some ghosts.

 Here is the result of project #1. The stencil was cut out of a sheet of mylar. I have twelve prints that look like the above. Below is the actual stencil with ink on it. It's essentially the inversion, which looks a lot better... *sigh* Too bad. I think I'll cut another one later on without using mylar. I could barely see/handle the stuff even with my fingers doing fine. Paper, ftw!

I'd take a picture of my whole screen rig, but the Prof is super anal about seeing, hearing, or getting a whiff of a cell phone. So that might not happen until I can get my ninja on.
Dreamweaver and CSS are just getting in gear. Both classes have really involved assignment structures and websites, so I'm still trying to settle in properly.

Peace.