messy texture printing for kids

I did some messy texture printing with my son, who is 3, and at work with a group learning family crafts.

I put a tablecloth down (on a coffee table in my house) and chose some textured items like bubble wrap, a toothbrush, sandpaper, cling film and foil crumpled up, lego blocks and sticklebrick piece, a toy car with tread marks on the wheels, wool, string, a cotton reel, corrugated cardboard and a brush, sponge dabber and roller.

I put out some acrylic paints and let my son play about by dabbing the textured things in the paint and stamping them on the paper. He enjoyed it.

Here's when the adult community group learning family crafts had a go at the same activity:

They also enjoyed it!

This activity is more for "process" than product. It's a nice way for children to experiment with making marks and finding out about different textures. However if you want to make it into something, we chopped up my son's one and made part of it into a birthday card...

2014

box set 2014

I was happy to take part recently in the East London Printmakers' Box Set 2014 - where 30 or so members each make about 40 limited edition prints then distribute them in boxes and each have a set of prints by each artist who took part. There are no constraints of medium (as long as it's print) or subject, only the size of the paper - about 30 x 30 cm.

I took part in a half-studio and half-handmade printing way - I exposed a screen with images for my screen print in the studio, as I don't have an exposure unit at home, but then printed it at home using the screen in some clamps I had previously fixed onto a wallpaper pasting table...

One of the images I had taken to the studio (my print had 4 layers) didn't expose properly, so I did have to make that design by hand on the screen as well - painting it with drawing fluid and screen filler.

I don't usually print 40 pictures at a time, and I don't have a drying rack, so to dry the prints looked like this:

Every surface in my living room was covered with prints. I had to keep the cats and my son out of the area for the duration of the printing session!

Prints...

...and prints...

...and more prints...

This is what the completed print looks like... I call it 'Green Birds.'

lino prints and stencil prints

In the last 2 weeks, in the fabric printing community class I teach, the students have been making lino prints...

and stencil prints...

registering prints

I have an old two-colour lino block which I use to make a print I call 'berries.'

I've always found it hard to register the two colours when printing (to get the second layer to fit in the right place on top of the first colour) although the two pieces of lino are similar shapes. So I tried gluing the lino blocks onto pieces of wood the same size, and putting a pencil dot at the corner of the block (on the fabric) each time I printed, to try and line up the second block in exactly the right place on top of where the first had printed. But that didn't work - the two prints were often still offset.

So I decided to make up a screen with the same design, to see if that was easier to register...

I made two screens on mesh stretched in embroidery hoops, and painted with screen drawing fluid then coated with screen filler. When they were dry, I washed out the drawing fluid under the tap.

Then I printed the first layer using fabric paint and a plastic card to spread the ink. That printed fine.

Then the second layer, placing the outlines of the berry shapes by eye on top of the blue dots of the berries, by looking through the holes in the screen and wiping the screen with a cloth in-between each print.

It did work. The outlines of the berries are a bit thick - this was ok in the lino prints but looks a bit crude somehow with the screen print. I could paint the second design on a screen again, with a finer paintbrush, but at least this way I was able to register the outline (pink) on top of the blob-shaped berries (blue).

festival t-shirt printing workshop

Three weeks ago I taught a t-shirt printing workshop for children at the Blythe Hill Fields festival in South East London.

It was a good day.  I was in a crafts tent in the middle of the fields, with a great view down to Canary Wharf:

I started off using my embroidery hoop screens plus stencils - some made by me, and some from "Stencil 101" by Ed Roth and a Dover book of dinosaur stencils.

The children could choose a stencil, a selection of which I had taped to the back of the tent, and a colour of fabric paint, and they put a piece of newspaper inside a t-shirt and placed their stencil on the t-shirt where they wanted to print it. Then they used a plastic card to spread fabric paint over the embroidery hoop screen with the stencil underneath, and lifted up the hoop and stencil to reveal the print. Some children wanted to add hand-painted effects with a brush as well, which added a nice individual creative if messy element to the t-shirts.

Then, when it got busier, which it did particularly when it started to rain and everyone came into the various tents in the festival to shelter, I didn't have time to wash up the hoop screens and just gave out the stencils with brushes and fabric paint.

The children who participated made some great t-shirts and it was a fun day.

handmade screenprinting workshop

Last month I taught a workshop on handmade screenprinting in Peebles, near Edinburgh.

Firstly the workshop participants cut out paper stencils based on previous sketches they had made and printed these onto fabric, using screen mesh stretched in an embroidery hoop as a screen and printing with fabric paint:

Then participants prepared second screens using drawing fluid and screen filler stencils, and printed these as a second layer on their textile prints:

Some more prints:

...and more:

...and a selection of the final prints laid out on a table:

The aim was for participants to try out handmade screenprinting, and to make the base for a textile artwork that could be added to with embroidery or worked on further if the artist wishes.

The workshop participants came mostly from the Peebles Creative Space art group which meets regularly with their teacher, artist Claire Blyth.  They all worked hard throughout the workshop and I think they made a variety of beautiful and original textile prints.

nasturtium prints

I printed my nasturtium designs using paper stencils and a handmade screen-filler screen...

I printed the first layer using paper stencils under an embroidery hoop with screen mesh.  I used discharge paste to print these designs - it takes the colour out of fabric, to leave a negative-looking shape.

When you print with discharge paste you can't see the print, except as a wet mark where the paste printed.  Then you have to wait for it to dry, then steam it for about 20 minutes (e.g. in a colander above boiling water in a big pan - wrap your printed fabric in tea towels or some other fabric before putting it in your homemade steamer).  After steaming you can wash the print and that's when the discharge print appears, taking the colour out of the fabric.

After the discharge prints had dried, I printed on top of them with normal printing paste (orange screenprinting ink), with the screen I made previously using drawing fluid and screen filler.

I'm planning to embroider over these pictures and make more layers using stitch.