Screen Printing

Printing Issues/Problems:

I did not enjoy this morning.
I think that it was due to the rush and strain of making a book in such a short amount of time rather than the fact that it was group work, but I do also know that if I did it my way, the positives would have been ready the day before printing. I hate last-minute deadline chaos and having to share the burden of this last-minute production with a team did not help to minimize this stress.

The First Nail-Biting Frustration of Wednesday Morning:
Not enough china graph markers! The china graph pencils were all in-use.
WE WERE THE FIRST GROUPS TO PRINT but we couldn't get hold of a china graph pencil. Grr.
I used my Stabilo Woody black pencil crayon instead which made a really dark black positive, whilst the rest of my group used marker pens which weren't strong enough when we took the positives to expose. We wasted time by having to re-colour.
Lesson Learned:
At least we have learned to make positives AS BLACK AS BLACK CAN BE in the future. We will not make this mistake again.

I HATE BEING LATE:

I can trust myself to never be late, but in a group of people, it's guaranteed that people won't be as time-conscious as I am. At 5 minutes to 1, I would have liked to be down in the print room, ready and waiting for the session; at 5 minutes past one today, we were still trying to finish the positives.

In the end, Lyndon understood why we were 10 minutes late to the workshop and we managed to catch up but I just really hated the experience of being late.

Lesson Learned:

Prepare and plan. Most of the time it took to prepare the positives was spent waiting for other people to draw their bit, waiting for your turn. Maybe we should have cut up the codatrace and split the panels so that we could draw up the positives at the same time.

Seeing Megan's group next to us working so well together and collaborating at every point made me really quite sad. We were all just so tense and determined to make a great book that it ruined the team bond. While their group stood huddled around their positives, drawing at the same time, we were counting the minutes we'd been waiting for our turn to draw. I tried so hard to be a good team member and I think I've learned a lot about the management of such a collaborative task, but I do think I've let myself down in not pulling the team together. I should have made more of an effort to keep the peace and to ensure that everyone was happy.
Don't be so self-centred. This is our challenge, not just your's.

Technical Difficulties

 Being too small for the printing beds, I couldn't reach! Alex struggled with this too. I think that this could have affected our prints because we didn't manage to push the squeegee all the way to the end of the screen, thus failing to make a good 'flood'.
Lesson Learned:
Ask for help if you need it. The print dudes are so lovely and when working in a team, there's bound to be someone who can lend a hand.
ALSO, I kept forgetting to pay attention to the paper. I printed on the wrong side of the newsprint TWICE.
Lesson Learned:
WAKE UP!

Printing Success
This afternoon went so much better than the morning. 
Once we got into the print room, we were a dream team again and we produced something amazing.
We did it! We knew that we had to buckle down today and finish our book, but we did get there in the end. There was no squabbling, just powering on through with the task at hand.

Mmmm...yummy printing medium and acrylic mixes! We discovered that it is so easy to mix lovely shades and that the overlayed result in print forms a gorgeous purple. Really impressed with our colour choice. When I've screen printed before, I'd just used colours that matched my subject but I've witnessed how this decision changes the whole aesthetic of the print. Bold colours look so vibrant and intense.

We saw other groups choose less high-contrast shades, such as two very similar blues, which had a very different finish to ours. It wasn't as eye-catching but it was much more pleasing and quiet.

THINK ABOUT THE TONE of the story.

The prints came out so beautifully. All of the illustrations look fantastic and they work so well together. Printing gives a textured, rich value that cannot be achieved digitally. You can feel the image and the overlays of colours is a feature that we were really happy with.

IT WAS TOTALLY WORTH THE TENSION AND THE ANXIETY AND THE STRAIN.

We did it and I am so proud! Look at the beautiful book. I can't stop looking at it.

Such a simple idea. Executed so well. Go team!

Looking at other books made in the studio, it was obvious that some positives had been really carefully constructed and were very intricate prints. We'd opted for a very basic, lofi vibe. Although I admired the delicate drawings of other groups, I think that our aesthetic suited the zine format. The illustrations are bold and funny, clear and direct.

I'm so glad that this week is over, I just want to begin something new and put the stress of this week behind me. I've enjoyed working with my group and I'm really happy with what we produced together but it's just been much too close for comfort.

I need Jayspace.