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.

Robins in the rain...

A ton of robins in all their rainy delight.

I don't think I had seen a robin since the last spring rain, which was a really long time ago. The weather has been unusually dry and warm here. Some days it felt like summer in November. But at last, it rained! Heavily, too. On the first day, I looked out the front windows to see a dozen robins splashing around in the puddles and gutters. When the rain got hard enough to hurt they all flocked into this fig tree that spills into our backyard. At one point, I counted about thirty robins. The scrub jay and mourning dove fled when it really started coming down, but all these robins looked positively gleeful. Robin doodle!

Whenever the rain kicks in I think of this poem:

All the rivers run into the sea;
yet the sea is not full;
unto the place from whence the rivers come,
thither they return again.

It is raining today in the mountains.

It is a warm green rain
with love
in its pockets
for spring is here,
and does not dream
of death.

Birds happen music
like clocks ticking heaves
in a land
where children love spiders,
and let them sleep
in their hair.

A slow rain sizzles
on the river
like a pan
full of frying flowers,
and with each drop
of rain
the ocean
begins again.
-Richard Brautigan

Luckily, it should be dry tomorrow while I haul 90% of my Silkscreen equipment to class. The screen is just large enough to be really uncomfortable to carry under an arm. And there are three more bags to juggle. Yeehaw. Commence printing! Maybe I'll have something to scan on Thursday? I don't know what the policy is on drying or bringing prints home yet. No more oil-based inks though, so that's nice... or at least, less toxic. Woo!

Oh yeah, I forgot to transfer all of my brush and tool presets over to my new computer. Fail. I'll have to set up the old computer and put them on a flash drive or something. Oof.
I must get some sleep!

おやすみ！

Stupid stumbles...

I sprained my ankle today. I blame SOPA... because I want to. Lulz.

Stepped off the treadmill at home and gravity tried REALLY HARD to break my ankle. But failed, thank goodness. It's not bad really. The ankle isn't even bruised. It's just puffy and hurts if I move it around much. At least I can still walk on it.  But FFFFUUUU. One more thing to fret over.

Finished The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Spent about 40% of the book bawling. Hoo boy. So many triggers. But it was wonderful. Sad and wonderful.

16-page syllabus for the Silkscreen class. *facepalm*
Mmmm'kay. Good to know he's... organized?  >.>
First prints will commence next Tuesday! Yay for learning new things!

...
10+ years of ballet and never a sprained anything.
How does that work?
-____-