First Day. A few hiccups but mostly it just felt good to have an entire day to make art. I’d had a rough game plan for what turned out to be an overly ambitious printing project. Several months ago, I’d purchased some basic screen printing supplies to do a few prints using the drawing fluid method. While I never gravitated towards screen printing in college, I did acquire a LOT of screen printing paper. One thing I never tried was the drawing fluid method but the more I read about it, the more I wanted to try it out.

For those of you not familiar with the technique, a brief introduction: “Screen printing is a printing technique whereby a mesh is used to transfer ink onto a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking stencil. A blade or squeegee is moved across the screen to fill the open mesh apertures with ink, and a reverse stroke then causes the screen to touch the substrate momentarily along a line of contact.” Most screen printing stencils are made using an indirect method where you draw your image on a transparency and then use light to transfer it onto a screen coated with photo emulsion. Using drawing fluid and screen filler allows you to draw your stencil directly onto the screen, resulting in a painterly quality to the image.

The project started out all right, I degreased my new screens, took some reference images, and spent about an hour drawing on my first layer using the drawing fluid. This is where I hit a snag. I’d read that you could use a hair dryer to speed up the drying process and for some reason this translated in my head to heat gun. Bad idea. The excess heat put a tear all the way down the screen. Fortuitously, I stayed calm, pulled out the second screen, and drew my image again. While this went more quickly, I realized there was no way that I’d get to print from this by the end of the day. I set the screen aside to dry and decided to do a small painting with the rest of my time.

Next week, I’ll draw down the screen filler and spend the rest of my time getting this website up and running. I’m trying to keep it simple so I don’t spend so much of these early days sitting in front of a computer but I know that having some kind of accountability will help me stay on track.

I did have this somewhat manic feeling at the beginning that I needed to keep moving so I could finish by the end of the day. After a cup of tea and a few deep breaths, I reminded myself that this isn’t a one time project. The actual process of art making is what I’ve been working towards - the day itself is the end and the beginning.