We managed to get back into the print studio again this week! I was really excited about this as I had loved it so much in my first week. We spent the day monoprinting – painting onto the screens with dyes and then running them through onto the fabric. This gives such a beautiful print that really gives off the hand-painted look that is truly unique.
Lisa had printed out some moodboards with a colour range that she was going for. She then explained to me that she was looking for some more abstract looking florals in these range of colours for the next lot of prints. Again, I tried to be as free as possible and just really try and experiment with what I was doing.
I ended up coming out with three prints this day, all of which I thought were quite different. It can be quite hard with the monoprinting because the colour of the dye is very different to the colour that is then transferred onto the fabric for the final print. This means you have to really think a bit more about what it is that you’re doing.
My favourite piece I ended up doing was a placement large scale Iris. Lisa seemed to really like this one too which I was very happy about. This was my final one of the day so I feel as though I had gotten to grips the most with the technique by the time I had done this one. The dyes are exactly like watercolour so I just really tried to tap into this and I wasn’t afraid to dilute them to get the effect that I was looking for – this I thought gave the best result.
This being said, I showed all of the prints that I did this day to my friend in the evening and her favourite was my least favourite one. This sparked an interesting conversation between me and Lisa the following day where we discussed the importance of not being too harsh on yourself and your work and realise that everyone has a very different taste and eye so everything we design has importance.
The next few days myself and Lisa uploaded some of the vintage prints that I had scanned in the previous weeks up to the website. I was enjoying that there was starting to become a bit more of a balance between the printing and admin side.