Book #219

Crossed Snowshoes

Today I attended a screen printing workshop which was really fun. I did a few different prints, including the red print on the cover of this book. I was not particularly happy with this print, but after I cut it up and turned it into a book cover, I like it more. The binding that I used today is another one from Keith Smith's book, and this is a 2-section binding that he calls crossed snowshoes. I modified it a little bit, if you are comparing, because I was not happy with the way he anchored the first two snowshoes. I found that his method made it very hard to keep the shape of the first cross and my little modification will keep them in position more effectively.

Guest Blogger Margaret Braun, Printing with natural dyes

Time for another guest writer and another PBI class. Margaret Braun is an artist in Edmonton, Alberta who has been to PBI three times, and last year was my roommate. This year she was in a class that I think would have been really fun, making dyes with natural and easily obtainable materials. Margaret has agreed to share a little bit about it here on my blog.

Stirring and Stirring and Stirring the Brew...

You may wonder, why bother using natural dyes?

Well, in a course at Paper & Book Intensive (PBI) 2012 entitled, "DIY Screen Printing with Natural Dyes and Materials" with Denise Bookwalter we found out! What fun it was!

Seemingly alive, the organic inks reflect the light in interesting ways. The subtle colours seem to harmonize with each other. One-of-a-kind colours become more mellow, softer, and more beautiful with the passage of time. There is something primitively satisfying about picking weeds and re-routing them into your dye pot to make something useful.

A couple of Margaret's prints from the class:

Concerns for the well-being of our planet can promote avenues for an alternative resource to printing. Vegetable-sourced colours do represent a realistic alternative -- using berries, leaves, flowers, fruits, roots, bark and insects. A mordant (we used alum) can help the dye colour become permanent.

The screen-printing process offers artists a way to produce multiples without the investment of a press and other large apparatus. The basic equipment consists of the screen (a wooden frame with a fine-mesh fabric stretched over it) and the squeegee. This is a rubber blade set in a handle with which the organic ink is pulled across a prepared photo-based screen. The mesh transmits an even coat of ink which adheres to the paper below the screen.

Basic Ink Recipe:

• bring water to a boil in a pot over a stove burner
• add plant matter of your choice (chop or break apart plant fibres) and stir occasionally
• turn down the burner to simmer until you get the desired strength of colour - stir
• strain
• add mordant into the coloured liquid until dissolved - of course, stirring
• sprinkle starch into the pot as you would when making gravy - more stirring
• continue simmering until ink becomes the consistency of a thick gravy - continue stirring
• remove from stove and let ink cool - stop stirring

Remember: Not all natural plant materials are safe to use. Search your local library for books or the internet for advice.

Natural dyestuffs produce unique colours that may vary widely from dye lot to dye lot. The temperature, growing soil, cooking times, volume of matter and other elements will cause variations. Most natural dyes are soft shades that reflect the natural world around us -- greens, yellows, blue, browns, grey, soft rose, peach, deep burgundies and a range of violets. Whether it is from the garden, grocery store or the other side of the road you will be sure to discover amazing colours! Most of all, experiment and enjoy your journey of your own personal discovery on a road of many colours!

Printmaking, for real

So, rubber stamps weren't the only thing we did in our printmaking course. Oh no, not at all. In fact, we covered so many things, I could barely take notes fast enough. The scope of the course included: lino prints, reduction printing, dark field monotype printing, trace-style monotypes, pressure prints, painted monotypes, a bit of colophon printing, and of course, screen printing. Then we covered some fun folding book structures at the end, which is a great way to visualize the process in the realm of book arts. This first picture shows Matt demonstrating the silk screen printing process.

The greatest bonus with silk screen printing is the ability to create many many many prints - once the screen is prepared, making the actual prints is slick and quick. As a class, we created a screen for printing some two-sided origami paper. I think there were a million prints made...or maybe about 50...something like that. Everyone was able to take a few sheets anyway. Matt showed us how to use a dark room and light table for exposing the screens, and then also showed us how to do it just by exposing the screen in direct sunlight for a couple minutes. So it can be done without too much special gear...that's nice to know. Although I don't think I'll take up screen printing.

I tried reduction printing, and stencil printing, and a couple monotype prints. But I found that I was most drawn to creating printing blocks with linoleum. I decided to create a few related images, resulting in these "Reminders of my Grandfather."




During the course, I created about half a dozen of these lino cuts. The last photo shows some of the linoleum blocks with the prints. We had access to a couple printing presses, but we also printed by hand without a press. The beauty of this being, that I can print them again...! Seems like a really basic concept, but it actually took a couple days before I understood this fully. I've already been to the art store to buy some ink and a brayer and more linoleum... I'm looking forward to using some of these new things in my books.