Appearing on the Screen

Among my many activities (when well enough to attend) and affiliations is with the Avon Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers. Last Saturday we were lucky to be given a workshop on silk screen printing at the meeting, run by excellent teacher and member, Sarah Harris. The last time I did screen printing was some decades ago, when we used paper masks in the screens as a means to print posters. This time, we were printing onto fabrics and using painted screens (using screen filler, a rubbery sort of pain. My elder daughter, Sarah, came with me, and she worked a wonderful flower design, a theme she has been exploring for a while.




I, on the other hand, worked with a rather art-nouveau-ish image from our Venice trip: peacocks from a wrought iron gate at the monastery of the Mecharist Armenians on the island of San Lazzaro, which caught my eye and imagination during our visit there.

I think my most effective image came from printing on hand-made silk paper, and best displayed on a darker background, like the glorious blue of the oil cloth that topped off the printing bed pictured above. It was very fiddly and time-consuming to work the screen, and all too easy to make mistakes - I had to go with the flow with those!

I enjoyed this technique, and will be doing more once I invest in some screen filler and screenprinting inks or medium. It was an exhausting workshop for me, and I had to go to bed for a longish nap when we got home, but it was worthwhile. Fortunately, the rest of the weekend was quiet so I was able to catch up some more on my rest.