colours painted into the screen

After all the time spent thinking, sketching, planning and sketching again, the printing process is fast and furious.  I spent a whole day in the print studio: in the morning I exposed the artwork into the screen and mixed my colours, and in the afternoon I made the print.

inks mixed ready to print the exposed screen

the first layer drying on the rack

layer two: a blend of purple and brown to add detail

layer 3 - green/blue highlights

I overprinted the image with words to bring the three parts of the tryptich together, and finally added the feathers  – I used real feathers in the exposure unit with the hand drawn artwork, and then printed the ‘negative’ image by painting the ink straight onto the screen – the same method I used for the first layer.

the final print

I’ve reached the technical stage.  Now I need to turn my ideas and sketches into a number of colour separations which will be layered to form the finished print.  I’ve decided to paint directly into the screen for the first layer and then will use either single colours or blends of colour for the detail.

I’m a little concerned that the sketches now look like lush rainforest, rather than a hawk’s habitat, so I may need to mute the colours a touch.  I’ve sketched out each layer and then hand-drawn each one full size, ready to expose into the screen when I go to the print studio on Friday.

The ideas are coming together.  I took Karen’s hawk photos as a starting point – I really want to work in the yellow of the hawk’s talons as a counterpoint to the calmer colours – and I found a feather at my allotment, and some more in a box when I was sourcing objects for another project. Scanned and solarised, they become something alien and unworldly.

I often work from photographs, so I took my camera to the Poetry Gazebo festival in Culpeper Community Gardens. I like the ‘hidden’ connections that are gathering in the print, with colours drawn from an event organised by Naomi Woddis, another Open Notebooks guest booker, and Karen reading her Wing poem as I took pictures of the greenness all around.  Next I searched my photo archives for images of leaves, water and wings. All these images are spread around me as I work on the colour sketches.

I was fascinated by the shape of Karen’s drafts for her own hawk poem; I hope to incorporate the form of her handwritten notes into the final print.

When Karen asked me if I’d like to make something visual in response to the hawk poem for Open Notebooks I was so excited I danced around the room a few times… when I stopped, I wondered if emptying my head and expending energy this way is actually the start of my creative process?   I often find the starting point for my ideas is a little like meditating – or maybe daydreaming…

Before I put anything on paper, I like to let ideas and images float and form before I start to model them in my head.  This usually happens when it would be difficult to note anything down; if I’m sitting on the bus, or swimming, or taking a shower – for some reason, being immersed in water often helps to kickstart the process.  Once the ideas are clearer, I make written notes, followed by tiny, extremely rough schematic pencil sketches to note the colours, techniques and processes I plan to use.

This is the stage I’m at now.  I know that the piece will have three segments, to echo the title of Karen’s film and the form of my own poem, and I know the colours I plan to use, and the broad shape of the piece, but I’m not sure yet if it is one print or a triptych, or whether I will incorporate text in the final work.  The next step will be to research some images and build the colours.