I feel that this week as been so successful for me- finally screen printing onto cotton (fairly large) has meant that I have found even more confidence in being bold with my shapes lines and colour choices. Using the screens has enabled me to turn my small A3/A2 drawings into larger, more design like pieces.
After this week- I have reflected on the pieces I have printed and realised that I need to start printing on to a coloured background- printing just onto white has been fairly difficult and has been limiting me. Having tried printing the background with procion- I have found that it has been a longer process in the long run as I have been using pigment as resit technique. The pigment does not penetrate the fabric where procion is sat underneath- I have been using this to my advantage to create some interesting marks and contrasting colours. Laying procion down before hand as a background would mean drying, steaming, washing and drying again before taping back down on the table again. I realised that dyeing my cotton beforehand in a pale neutral using direct dyes would be a more successful and time worthy process.
Today I tested small swatches of cotton in various combinations of pale browns/taupes/greys. I realised how difficult it is to achieve pale shades. After finally getting 3 shades that I was almost happy with I thought that I would dye some larger pieces of cotton to test on monday to see how the procion sat on top of the colour. These pieces did come out slightly darker than I had hoped- which has made me realise that I need to keep an eye on the colour as it is on the hob.
