My final in project in Nottingham!

I was hoping to do a lot more on here this last week with discussing process and formation of ideas, at the very least a sort of “office jukebox” but the last seven days has been remarkable unusual.  Tuesday I landed something of a dream job at the newly opened Flood Gallery in Greenwich, London.  The gallery is the only one of it’s kind in the city and deal with screen printed gig and posters as well as the other media associated with the genre.  Things like art prints, tee shirts, merchandise and maybe in the future a variety of books, vinyl toys, etc.  Whilst working in the gallery itsself with a very small team I’ll also be helping set up a screen printing studio so we can start commissioning posters of our own and putting together tour series.  A proper studio, not like the one I’m about to show you which is made out of junk in an old coal shed in my back garden.  I’m quite excited to say the least.  Also, today being the last day of my guest blogging here is quite appropriate as tomorrow I leave the city, nullifying my eligibility as a Notts-based artist.  As a document, this has tied up my time here, six years in Nottingham and nine in the Midlands generally, quite nicely and I’d like to thank Charlotte and John for the opportunity.

Now then.  Whatever you do.  Don’t double book a surprise house move with the printing of thirty 3 colour screen prints.  Lots goes wrong when you’re screen printing on junk, especially when the weather has been as appalling as these last few days.  This week has been insane.

My print studio is the same space I use for painting and you can kinda tell as it’s almost completely covered in paint.  The table I use is collapsible so I can get it out of the way for other things.  Whilst setting it all up I put together a process thread for the Gigposters.com forum which you can view here:  http://www.gigposters.com/forums/posters/57921-finally-getting-together-process-thread.html Not much has really changed since then as you’ll be able to see from the photos below.  It’s quite fitting that my first and last poster on this set up has been documented so thoroughly.

Exposing the second screen.

This is the second screen being exposed.  Yep, that is a security light tied with a bit of unused washing line hung off a bit of wood wedged between the walls of an old outhouse.  it’s worked fine for four years, believe it or not.  Entertainingly, my exposure time is somewhere between 22 and 25 minutes.  Most people, using proper equipment, have a three or four second limit.

The process of the first colour wasn’t photographed as it was very difficult to pick up on camera.  It’s a silver halftone layer taken from the original pencil drawing.  more a subtle touch than anything else as you will see from the photos later in this post.

Pulling the red layer

Here you can see exactly how much of a mess my studio is.  Damp, full of cobwebs, brick dust….  I love it.

the red layer down

This is pretty self explanatory, really.  Everything has gone quite well on this run.  A bit of blocking on the text, but nothing drastic…

Pulling the black layer

I quite regret not photographing the screen for this layer before the ink was laid down.  It’s quite interesting to see the image in negative, I find…

The last print!

And here’s the last print going on the rack.  All went well with this run apart from a little bit of blocking.

Here’s a few details showing the silver halftone layer, which also expose my slightly weak registration:

The trees

The sigil

Her face

Then, the final touches are signing and numbering the run:

Signing...

... and numbering

And we’re finished!  You’ll notice the edition is now out of twenty nine.  This is due to loosing one to a big inky finger print.  Quite silly of me.

The finished print

Finally, here’s a shot of the whole print.  These will be on sale at the festival and then from my web store the day after.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these posts during the last few weeks, it’s been a lot of fun putting them together.  Again, if any of you have questions, please feel free to use the comments section below to ask them.