Silkscreen Class Week Three

I haven't posted my first prints, but this is the second round. I took a photo from our wedding and I took a photo that I arranged of my husband's and my shoes by the bench at the door. The first is obviously "Wedding." The second I titled "Marriage." I decided to do them together as a piece.

I edited them in Photoshop to make them both black and white and textural. Then, I placed them one over the other and used my own handwriting font to add the titles. I selected the black and white and made them separate layers, so that I could separate the layers with the silkscreen. I mixed an aqua green and a deep blue-purple as my two inks. When I attempted to line up the registrations, I had great difficulties. This was the result:

As you can see, the white of the paper comes through the two inks. My gut reaction was that I actually liked it that way -- that it gave the print depth. However, the manager of the print studio commented that I could have made color blocks for the background to avoid the gaps. Further, the professor spent many minutes trying to help me get it to line up perfectly, explaining that the colors should overlap slightly. So, I trashed the emulsions and tried again.

This time, I made color blocks (huge black rectangles in Photoshop) and used them to print the aqua green. I then used the images to print the purple over those blocks:



I don't like it as much. This whole project took from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. with one break for lunch, which made it exhausting being on my feet the whole day.

One of my fellow students would like me to "ghost" the wedding over the "marriage" in colors that will combine for a third color. I may try that next. I may "grow" the two layers so that they overlap properly instead of doing blocks. I may move onto another print for now and think about how I would do it best.

I kind of think that people would find this print amusing enough to want one. That would be nice.