a more painterly approach to screen printing

 

This week I have spent a lot of time screen printing - using three different types of fabric and three different images.  Earlier I screenprinted onto polyester cotton (see above) - the colour dye adheres better to cellulose than the polyester, giving a less intense colour.

Screenprinted reactive dyes onto pure cotton gives brighter results.

I have been trying to develop a more painterly approach.  With the screen in situ on the fabric I have been pulling the squeegee in different directions with different colours, leaving gaps and creating interesting patterns where the inks meet and overlap.

  

I have negative and positive screens for this 1960s wedding and have printed them onto linen -overprinting and offsetting layers.  The linen offers an interesting coarse textural fabric to print onto. 

Finally, I printed a simple drawing, again using reactive dyes, onto pure cotton.  The colours were much brighter. 

 Now I want to energise and unify this collection by adding gold coloured embellishments - stitch, foil, print and text