I'm Not As Good At Screenprinting As I Thought.

This weekend has been a busy one for me. I'm trying to get ahead in school because this next week on Tuesday and Thursday I will be the assistant in a dyeing workshop given by a visiting artist (I'll talk more about that in a later post).

This workshop is all day Tuesday and Thursday, meaning I will miss my printmaking class those days, or in other words, 6 hours of studio time. Our current project is due the following Tuesday, meaning I get no class time to work on it.

I actually would rather work outside of class time since it's a lot less crowded, so it's not an issue for me. I've been screen printing for a couple of years now in my fibers classes and had gotten pretty good at it, so I figured I could crank out the five layers I needed in a few hours yesterday. That was not the case.

There are a lot of things different about the way the fibers screenprinting goes and the printmaking screenprinting goes, and so I feel very clumsy and out of my element trying to get used to everything. For one thing, I have a much smaller workspace than I'm used to. I cannot keep anything clean because I'm not used to everything being so jammed together. In fact, I actually had to go buy more paper yesterday because I ruined so many sheets.

 I got to spread out a bit because there weren't as many people in the studio yesterday.

I ran across the street to one of the off-campus school supply stores that stocks the norm (textbooks, pencils, UNT shirts...) but also has a large art supply section. I figured that since it was Saturday, I could run in and out fairly quickly and didn't even bother taking off the apron I was wearing since no one would really see me.

I walk in and there is a very long line. I had forgotten that it was game day. Not any game day, but the first game day of the year and the first game ever in the brand new stadium. Everyone was buying UNT shirts. I sadly got in the long line so I could ask for my one sheet of Rives BFK. While I was in line, I kept getting a lot of weird looks and I didn't know why. And then I looked down.

I took this picture while standing in line.

I had forgotten I was wearing the apron. This apron isn't mine, but a classroom apron, so there's no telling how old it is. Hardly any of the actual fabric is showing on this thing. I took a full picture later so you could see how I looked:

It doesn't help that the apron was longer than my shorts and it looked like I wasn't wearing pants from the front.

The guy in front of the in the line buying a - surprise! - UNT shirt turned to me and said, "Uh, so do you, like, paint a lot?" to which I responded, "Oh, no, I'm in printmaking." I think that confused him because he didn't look like he understood what I meant, but he turned around after that and didn't try to say anything after that.

Finally when I got back to work I started getting in the grove of things a lot better, but my prints still aren't perfect. If I had a perfect print on one layer, I'd get a drip on the next layer on that sheet. At least the craftsmanship has improved since my first project last week.

I only managed to get three layers done in the three hours I was in the studio. At least I'll be able to finish the last two today and be done with it. I'll take a picture of the best one and post it... maybe.

-- Laura