Screenprinting at Heriot Watt.

Screenprinting at Heriot Watt. 

As someone that’s interested in textiles and hopes to go onto Heriot Watt in the future, being able to go and do screenprinting over there for a day was fantastic! 

After arriving with my very freshly made prints we scanned them onto acetate, so I can see what things could be possible with screenprinting Grace made my etchings  into negative’s and changed the sizes also. Making the size of the pattern big makes it becomes more suitable for interior design, where having a small tight repeat pattern is more suited for fashion textile pieces. 

Once I had my prints on acetate I cut them out and started to arrange them on graphic paper, I placed four registration marks on the graphic paper,  which are there to keep everything lined up. 

After gluing down the etchings to the graphic paper I then added another layer to the design. On a separate sheet of tracing paper Grace asked me to draw squiggles round my etchings, because of the hold-up I had printing my etchings, I hadn’t had time to consider what pattern or layout I should have for my screen print. 

Originally I was just going to have my prints of Iceland as a repeat, Without the background. But at the time Grace who is head of screenprinting thought my prints would benefit from having a background. 

In order to make it into a repeat pattern I simply cut my print in half,  putting the two straight edges from the top and the bottom of the paper together, making it into one big jigsaw piece. This allows it to link back together later on. Once I had my two layers I transferred them onto screens. After preparing my bench for printing I picked out the two colours that I would use for my print. 

To try and make my print somewhat in keeping with Iceland, I chose grey and blue as my two colours. I picked grey and blue, as they were the most similar to the colours to traditional Icelandic jumpers. 

In general being unable to go over to Heriot Watt and learn the process of screenprinting was great, it’s given me a better understanding of textile printing and what can be achieved with it. The downside to the experience was that I only got to do my print once. 

The final piece wasn’t what I’d hoped for, if I could do it again I wouldn’t have the background, as I think it distracts you from the etchings. I wanted my print to reflect my time in Iceland as well as the country, which it doesn’t do.