OK, so back to Barack

I'm blogging in random pockets of "free time" today (read: three minutes here, feed a kid, three minutes there, drive a kid somewhere, three minutes over there, give the dog medicine, and so on). So back to Barack.

Today was Day Three of my five-day silk screen crash course. Can I just say - one more time - how absolutely divine it is to go work in an art studio from 9AM - 2PM every day? Seriously, a gal could get used to this.

Today I finished paining one screen in the morning. It wouldn't have been so tedious or taken so long if I hadn't picked such a detailed image. Whew. It got a bit mind-numbing there for a minute. I'll be curious to see how it prints. I should get to try it out tomorrow.

We also coated a couple of screens with the photo emulsion stuff (is there a more technical term? Kat, help me out) That was fun and very interesting. Tomorrow, we'll burn images on the screens and get read to print them on Friday. That is going to be fu-hun.


I also created a Barack Obama stencil today. It blew my mind. Here's what I love about printing so far: you spend all this time and work prepping a stencil or screen, and all the while you aren't sure how it's going to print (at least I'm not at this stage in my learning process). And just when you think, "This is gonna print like crud" you print it and it exceeds all your wildest expectations.

My Barack stencil did just that today. I spent ages cutting it out. Kat and I had to sit and walk through getting the ears just right, and there was some "oops" cutting, re-taping and re-cutting going on. Once I finished the stencil, I thought, "Meh ... it's okaaaaayy, but ...." What can I say, I had low expectations.

But when I put that puppy down on some scrap fabric and printed it with an insanely delicious aqua paint ... oooooohhhhhh .... it was like magic. I pulled the screen up and almost passed out. It came out ten million times better than I thought it would. Before I knew it, we were all giddily screening him on anything that would sit still for two seconds - the table cloth, our aprons, students' bags - it was Obama madness (what is it about him!) Mostly, though, it was loads of fun. I worked really hard today on lots of tedious stuff, but the payoff was gigantic. I love that!

And, thanks to some great inspiration from a fellow student and from Kat, I have some fun ideas of what I am going to do with these prints. I can't wait. I wish I had them at home so I could start playing now!

Kat also showed us how to use wax on screens and create interesting textures for backgrounds. I was so involved in painting and cutting that I didn't have a chance to play with the wax today, but it will still be set up tomorrow so I can take a shot at it. Should be fun.

Tonight, I'm going to make some final decisions on what images to use for photo emulsion, and I'm going to start work on a couple of other stencils. I have one more set of stretcher bars and fabric, so I'm going to make one more screen as well.

In the meantime, I'm plotting where I'll set up my silk screen station in the house ......