Tuesday 15th January - Screen Printing

As my figure motif had been exhausted, I was now taking the patterns from the drawings I had done and screen printing with them. Usually when I print, I get a lot of prints onto paper but not as much as I'd like onto fabric. The problem with this is that I am then restricted as to what I can do to develop the prints on paper so I would rather have them on fabric so I can then sew into them, quilt them, make lots of little samples and sew them into a little patchwork hanging. I also dyed some bright backgrounds, but not many. I do love my colour, and this is clearly evident in all my work til date, but I need to tone it down so it balances, so I also need some calmer backgrounds with subtle colours.
To make it more personal in a way, and to show some skill I suppose, I also mixed up my own printing inks. 
The process for making your own printing inks:-
Mix the base paste which is clear, with a couple of drops of pigment dye. The darker or brighter that you want the colour to be, the more pigment dye to add. This way I was able to control these factors. I mixed up 4 calm colours/shades compared to what I had been using before. My palette was limited which was a good thing so this way I would be able to get all the colour in using thread and stitch. 

Another task that was looming over my head was to prepare my work/portfolio for interviews. The last visiting lecturer that we had was a tutor from Camberwell, and she told us that it is not necessary that our work is mounted. They are perfectly capable of looking at it how it is, but I feel that if I was to listen to her and not mount my work, I would appear to be a lazy student who does not really care about her work and the way it appears to others. I think that a really good piece of work can end up not looking as good if it is not mounted properly. Work needs to be shown off as much as it can by a good mount job.