Just though I’d show a sneak review of some books I’ve been working on. These are for the University of Southampton’s art and craft show, which will be held on Sunday, 28th November. Come and see me!
So I’ve been badgering(!) away, and making different badges. The ones above originally looked like this before being popped in the oven. I’m not quite sure if I fully like these- I don’t know anyone that would actually want to wear a portrait on their lapel so perhaps they don’t make much sense… but they were my attempt at a sort of modern victorian cameo.
Below- the pin backs are held in place with a little piece of felt for strength.
I haven’t posted for quite a while, but I have been busy. My current university project is an anniversary hardack edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species, with at least 14 chapter illustrations, some full page and some vignettes, so I’ve been quite busy reading the damn thing, researching and drawing for it. These are some of my initial drawings for the themes of the book. I wanted to make it quite new looking, but stll referencing the media of the time.
Silkscreening is a great way to get your designs onto paper, fabric, metal, wood- pretty much anything! The method doesn’t actually use silk- but it’s a fine mesh that’s stretched across a frame. It allows you to use more complex design that a a stencil and spray paint or paint because the mesh allows you to attach islands that would otherwise be lost. You can block off areas of the screen in various ways- using a light sensitive fluid to create a very detailed image, or using viscous fluid to block out some parts of the mesh. The very simplest version of silkscreening uses a stencil, and this is the method I’m going to explain here.
This particular method uses contact paper (or sticky-back plastic as it’s known to schoolchildren and librarians alike), but you can also use a sheet of acetate, paper, card or stencil film. I’m going to go with contact paper for this one because although it’s not really re-usable (many prints can be made with the one stencil, but once you clean up and peel it off it’s pretty much gone) it does happen to make pretty clean images.