Miriam Ward Textiles: Screenprinting Experimentation

Following completion of the other “workshops” in this stage of my course I felt I still wanted to revisit screenprinting and perhaps push some of my learnings from that assignment a little further, I really like the idea of printing onto a lighter fabric and then seeing how the image appears after that.

I agonized for a while over which stencil technique to try and whether to print the ammonite or nautilus image – and finally decided to go with both!

I created a sticky backed plastic stencil (appealing to my love of precision….) and worked on the nautilus design. I had photographed the shell in the Manchester Museum in the Turing Exhibition and had been spending some time manipulating the design and creating other images from it. For this section I decided to experiment with a wider range of fabrics than I had in the last assignment, and am really quite pleased with the results – particularly on the muslin. I think the most effective designs from this “batch” of prints are the ones where I have re-positioned the screen and done a second pull over the original pull. As I found in the last assignment I think acetate/sticky backed stencils are in danger of lacking atmosphere and perhaps don’t give a textured image with depth.

Moving onto the vilene stencil I was a little skeptical as to how my image would translate when screen printed – I wondered if it would just end up a dark mess. This experimentation surpassed my expectations and in the end I was over the moon with the resultant prints – particularly in the sparkly synthetic fabric – the way the black ink covered the fabric leaving bright areas exposed I felt was really effective and I can really see the potential for these experiments to lead me to some interesting ideas!.....my brain is already running away with me. I suppose that screen printing will continue to be my nemesis, I don’t “enjoy” the preparation/technique/mess etc, but I LOVE the images I am able to create!