Klamath Falls Workshop

The Orange Wheelbarrow

Me Musing . . . August 16, 2009 . . . a break from The Red Barn episodes!

I just returned tonight from Klamath Falls, Oregon where I took a two-day Surface Design Workshop with Mickie McCormic. It was held at Betty Spoonemore's wonderful Teaching Space called 'Willing Hands'. It was great fun, especially since there were just 4 of us . . . we got lots of individual attention.

I took these photos and wanted to get them posted before I forgot what they are!!!!!!!!

Printing on Fabric using Freezerpaper . . .

A wonderful leaf Mickie had scanned (left image)
then we photocopied onto fabric which had been ironed
to freezer paper for running through the copier (right image)

Example of how you can print from anything!
Combs put on copier and printed onto fabric,
again attached to freezer paper for running through copier.

Printing with Transparencies . . .

The leaf again which was printed onto a transparency
and then using the back of a comb was
'burnished' onto fabric

This one came out a little lighter,
but there was still ink on the transparency,
so I did it again over top of this and
it came out darker. Very fun!

Solarplate Printing . . .

I printed 'Chinra~Minka' both regular and then inverted
and we made a negative on a transparent sheet,
then placing it over a special metal plate
we exposed it to the sun for 2-1/2 minutes
and it 'burned' a 3-D image onto the plate.

This is Mickie scrubbing off the gooey film
from her leaf Solarplate
and below is what mine looked like afterward!

The top image I used for printing and
bottom image was after cleaning and before printing.
It is difficult to tell, but the printing has a raised surface
which can be used for printing or for rubbings

Then we moved on to Deconstructed Silk Screen Printing . . .
(This is a technique I REALLY wanted to learn!)

We began by putting interesting things under a silk screen.
My Chinra-Minka Solarplate is under the spiral wire,
but difficult to see! Also used a Solarplate of a flower
and cardboard letters of my initials and a quarter!

Then we poured a thickened dye into the 'well'

and

squeeged it over the screen (this one is Mickie's leaf)

and

this is mine after all covered with dye.
We left the screens to dry overnight
then next morning took the objects off the back
of the screen and we were ready to print!

Getting ready for the Magic to begin!

Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of the first
few 'pulls', but after I had done them all, here
is what had come out . . .

You can see at the top left how each 'pull'
of the squeege over the screen 'deconstructed' the blue dye
that was already on the screen.
One would think that you would get a rich saturation
of colour on the first one and less on the last.
But somehow it is magically the reverse!
I 'pulled' yellow and orange thickened dye
over the blue and less and less of the objects
showed and more and more of the new colours came out.
(Sort of hard to describe!)

The 'Chinra-Minka', initials and flower design had
'deconstructed' and only blotches of them
were left among the brilliant orange-golds and greens . . .
colours I adore!!!!!

Then we wrapped them up in plastic
to 'batch' for 24 hours, then wash the piece
before using it for something interesting!

August 17, 2009 . . . I just took a photo of 'before' washing and 'after' washing so here they are to compare.

On the left is before washing
On the right is after washing . . .
Seems to have lost some of the vivid oranges . . . darn!
However, you can now see the whole sequence of the printing.
Begins at the top with the 3 blue/white prints,
then from left to right each row after.
The second row with that partial orange was something we tried,
but can't remember now what it was!!!!!!!!!

Until soon,

Che'usa

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