SCREEN PRINTING

I wanted to screen print some of the fabric for a couple of reasons, first of all to have some different looking prints amongst the gum arabic prints to have some variation and to 'break up' the other kinds of prints, especially as I was worried that having too many of the washy and grey gum prints would make the costume look too 'murky'. Secondly I thought it would be a good opportunity to take some of the gum arabic and lino prints that I was less happy with and use screen print over the top to both enhance them and change the narrative of the illustration.

Layering two different screen prints of a floral pattern and a bird Mark had the idea of using the flowers to create a border around the eye, which immediately looks like the bird is hiding in some foliage.  Below we printed a horse on it's own as it was such a stand alone bold image, and I think it looks a lot like the traditional horse on the hill in Wiltshire and also shows some Eastern European influence that I have been referencing throughout this project. I think the flat black print against the fabric is striking and will look bold next to the moodier gum arabic prints, whilst also maintaining the mysterious and threatening edge that I want the overall costume to have.

I also printed some abstract mark making, again to break up the pictorial patches that I have and also to emphasise the very same marks that I have used in the illustrations.

Below are examples of where I took weaker gum arabic prints (that are pictured above) and printed over the top with a stronger, black screen print. I combined the horse with the boots because visually I think the composition of the boots cuts down through the horse, suggesting the power people have over animals, also highlighted by the vividness of the boots compared to the faded animal in the background. The strong screen print over the wild boar also suggests some kind of perspective, again an animal hiding in the undergrowth.

Another technique I used when screen printing was cutting out stencils to cover up parts of the fabric so that the darker ink wouldn't completely envelop the original print. I did this below with the two horses, cutting out the horses from another piece of paper and covering it on the fabric. This again emphasises the original gum print, either pushing into the foreground or pushing it back.

Thinking about how I was was going to arrange the patches for the costume I decided that I wanted to design some patches and edit some patches to create a story. I thought I could do this by adding spots of colour on the certain story patches so that the audience can follow a story across the costume, making up their own narrative and their own story about what happened, again cementing this idea of an unreliable narrative of spoken word story telling.

I drew a quick story board to decide what shapes/ images I would like to print over with the red:

I then used the scanned in gum arabic prints to create the marks and images in Photoshop over the top so they matched up- and to reflect the other screen prints used a combination of brush strokes and scribbles as well some more defined images such as the girl and the bears chains/ muzzle so that the whole thing blended together.

These patches are the 'story' patches, and I was pleased how the red appeared on the fabric. On the white parts of the material the paint is a very strong red, and when printed over the top of the black/grey prints it becomes slightly murkier- almost like a blood that has dried. I think using the red highlights the part of the image that I wanted to be the most eye-catching- emphasising the anger of the mob by reddening the cheeks, adding red to the pick axe to suggest violence/ blood shed, picking out the figure of the girl walking through the dark (mainly because she wasn't visible enough in the original gum arabic!).

I was glad I experimented with the screen print in the first place as it was from that where I decided to use the red to emphasise the narrative within the costume.

I also decided to use screen prints to make the lino prints different from each other, when laid out with the other patches they looked far to repetitive as they were. I used the pattern screen prints over the top of the lino prints to layer abstract images with the very solid illustrations.

I think that the screen prints add a kind of manic chaos to the static prints, as well as making them individual from the other lino prints. As with most of the prints, it also creates a cohesiveness where I have used the same marks/ patterns/ and illustrations across the whole costume.