monotype print

Today I woke up and saw some white stuff on the roof tops below me. Was it heavy frost or snow? A short walk confirmed that it was the first snow of the season.

I started with a 6″ square and cut the snowflake smaller as I tweaked the design.

The paper is weak and thin. That makes it easy to  cut but requires a gentle touch when using it as a stencil on the gelatin plate.

I made several prints. Letting the ink build  up on the stencil and playing with the gold background.

Not sure what I will do with these prints, but it was fun to cut the stencil and make a few prints. Here is a quick video on how to fold the paper and cut a 6 pointed snowflake.

Easy 6 point Snowflake from Linda Germain on Vimeo.

Line drawings are easily converted to a small screen for printing with a Thermofax Machine.

The machine is about $1200. and a roll of screen is about $200, but there are many folks who will create screens for you and sell screens online and in Etsy shops. I would suggest getting a few screens and trying out the process before you go and buy a machine.

Screen printing is a great process if you want to print many of the same image consistently. I realized that I don’t do that type of printing very often. I am more of a one of a kind, monotype printmaker. But I do love the type of line image that is possible with a thermofax screen print.

As I created this screen I thought about varying the thickness of the line to create a screen that would print some delicate lines and some bolder lines.

Once you get set up it is pretty quick to print up a whole piece of cloth. Use nice fresh ink and a sponge or squeegee to gently “push” the ink through the holes on the screen.

Check out how easy it is to get started with thermofax printing in this blog post.

So I took my little block print from yesterday and printed it several times in black ink on paper. I played with the layout and possible designs.

I kept the designs small, because thermofax screens are easier for me to print if the are small. I can hold and move all the tools to make an overall print.

I made about 4 different screens and just had to test them all, the whole orange, 1/2 slice and some tumbling 1/2 slices. Some of the screens burned more successfully than the others. I am never quite sure why.

I warmed up the machine and ran the photocopy through with the emulsion coated mesh screen. Usually is comes out ever so slightly stuck to the screen. This time they were not so stuck. The 1/2 slice looked okay, but when I got to printing it, the impression was somewhat spotty.

I don’t use the machine enough to be able to really read the the screen. It is hard for me to tell if the emulsion has been “burned” enough. Of course there are other factors, ink, paper, fabric and type of squeegee that all affect the quality of the impression.

So I played with printing on several different types of fabric and paper to see if that was affecting my impression. It printed beautifully on this scrap piece of linen. Notice the blue block printed mark. I think this is a great example of the difference between the type of mark that is possible with soft carved block prints and thermofax screen prints.

The more I print, the more I learn. I like it that way. Have you tried screen printing with simple paper stencils? Check out the free tutorial.

I see a lot of leaves on my daily walks, so naturally they are feeding my #SEEdrawPrint challenge. Sometimes I pick them up and trace them, study their edges and shapes.

It is fun to pause and really look that the edges, veins and imperfections. This one is printed in a muddy red color to mimic the fading colors of fall here in New England.

Small thermofax images are nice for creating detailed overall patterns. I may add another leaf to this print to fill the open white space of the cloth.

I was sorting through my studio and found a cut paper stencil. It is a sort of flower inspired image.

I colored the flower stencil a dark color so I could make a good photocopy. Then I evened out some of the lines with a sharpie. Made another photo copy and used that to burn the thermofax screen on the left in the image above.

I was not sure where I was going to use this screen so I printed it on some sampler cloth that I have to test out images.

A few weeks ago I used a similar cut paper stencil to inspire a block print design. The red image below is a soft carved block print and the green image it the thermofax screen print.

I am not sure if you can tell but the block print creates a less solid impression. The green flower has a more consistent coverage. Though the 2 flowers in this picture were not so perfect.

I was comparing printing with a sponge and a squeegee. The sponge pushes more ink through and the squeegee seems to push a thinner layer through the screen. This image is more open than the leaf image I did last week, when using a cosmetic sponge was perfect.

I am realizing how much I choose to make art and marks with ways other than drawing. But I also have quite a few sketches and doodles going that might be turned into screens, block or stencils.

If you are like me and need some coaxing to embrace your drawing habit, then try out the Drawing with Matisse Tutorial.