Taught a screenprinting workshop at Armley Mills on Saturday, and helped a little girl design and print a Peppa Pig bag! Cute eh?
Last night my new colleague Gareth stayed behind at work to help me print my first 2 colour design “Spinning Wheels” from my residency at Armley Mills. My vision for my residency was to produce 5, 2 colour designs screenprinted onto 5m reams of fabric. Unfortunately I didn’t realise how much time the print process would take, the set up of each screen and the printing table is very lengthy and it’s definitely a two people job with each screen being 150cm x 101cm. I had also unfortunately designed all my fabrics as “cut throughs” i.e. a bit of the image at the top and bottom of each design. This means when hand printing it’s extremely difficult to line up. This is why there is a small gap in the repeat. So in order to finish these lengths properly will take a lot more work. However. It has been a fantastic learning experience. I have crammed in so much work in one month it’s been great to have a feeling of fulfillment, even if I didn’t manage my ultimate goal. And I’m really really happy with my first try at large scale design and screenprinting. Onwards and upwards!
As part of my residency at Armley Mills industrial museum I taught a screenprinting session to a class of junior school children. They made some really nicely designed bags! Their designs were based on some african patterns and artifacts that Cara from the museum had brought from the Discovery Centre.
Opening Night at Armley Mills information
Due to technical problems I will not be able to have my opening night on Wednesday. I really wanted to exhibit my work but it will not be at a stage to show it by this Wednesday. I’d like to offer my sincere apologies to anyone who was going to come to this. I’m hoping I will be able to exhibit the lengths of fabric in Armley Mills at a later date. I will keep you posted.
Another possible print for my residency. This one is based on drawings of the spinning wheels in the mill. It’s not limes! Again, the colours are up for changing, but you get the gist of it…
Sneaky preview: Artist in Residency @ Armley Mills.
This is the first design that I’ve finished. It’s the most “finished” design and the least abstract of all the designs i’m working on. I’ve also nearly finished a design based on nails, will post as soon as satisfied!
This print is (fingers crossed all goes well) going to be hand screenprinted by myself and my lovely new colleagues at work. I’ve not really got any scope for it to go wrong, so got to hope it’s going to be ok!! Wah!! The repeat is 140w x 91cm (MASSIVE) so you can now understand why I’m worried!! But EXCITED!!! YEE HA!!!
Not totally sold on my colours yet, got to do a bit more research and consider the other patterns before I choose my palette. But it will definitely be two colours. Probably.
Another great workshop today, some lovely work made!
As promised here is a list of suppliers etc. Please contact me via my website www.mintprint.org if you have any more questions or fancy booking another workshop!
Miriam
- Major Brushes sell basic cutting tools, the vinyl tiles you were working on and basic rollers. They also sell the waterbased ink that I showed you, but you didn’t use these.
http://www.majorbrushes.co.uk/
If you wanted to try litho ink that we used you can buy it from Intaglio Printmaker. As I said it is far more expensive. They also sell waterbased inks for relief printing. I have no experience of these so can’t recommend any to you.
http://www.intaglioprintmaker.co.uk/
Hope this is helpful, will post photos soon! Mail me if you need any more help!
Miriam
Been busy updating my Etsy store with pretty piccies of my pretty piccies!! You can see my store by clicking on this link www.etsy.com/shop/MintprintStore
