E21

E21, one letter and two numbers, but about as close to my personal nirvana as is possible.  The Morley College textile suite, E21 is where I’ll be on Thursdays this academic year.

First up, screen printing from a paper stencil.  Trying to continue some of the sweeping shapes from last year’s Creative Textiles course, I drew ( !) this frond / blob / inebriated starfish in my sketchbook ( this is getting a bit serious).

Then cut in newsprint, and used to print with the screens that we stretched last week, I have transformed a very worn and tired looking old sheet into

Continuing with the now adhered stencil, and the addition of yellow print paste, gave these lovely firebird effects

     

The ombre effect is made by placing distinct blobs of different colours of the print paste on the screen and then dragging the blobs down the screen.

The shadow effects are caused by placing the wet screen down again on the existing print before the paste is dry.  As with many textiles, these serendipitous effects are the ones I like the most, and will probably be impossible to recreate.