Silk screening: Days of research, hesitation, sketches, research all for 15 minutes of actual process

After hours (days, really) of decision paralysis and years of terror, I finally introduced myself to a silk screen today. Since I have almost no graphic arts-style imagination, it took almost half the day to draw a design of my own. I know that there are millions of patterns on the web and many many stencils for sale, but I feel like it just isn't mine if I don't make all the parts myself. (I did not, however, mix my own ink or build my own screen. There are limits.) There was also the gathering of tools and the solving of problems like: what to put under the T-shirt to raise it off the table enough to prevent the clips from bending the cardboard inside the shirt.

Art is a struggle for some of us.

Craft is...just plain work. But you can practice and get better, more skillful. And just maybe you gain enough skill to produce a window into a deeper world that other people can access and see with you.

And that is pure joy.

But art just won't come out right if you ignore the physics of the bendy board when trying to push paint through a rigid-framed flat screen.

Things should go faster next time, since I now have a bucket of materials and tools gathered together.

I cut a stencil out of freezer paper. I have a lot to learn about handling a knife, but I consider this a good start. I spooned in some black fabric ink from a Speedball kit--and let me say this to people who write instruction manuals: instructions like "Make sure you put in enough ink" don't mean anything to someone who buys an introductory kit. If I knew what enough was, I would not have bought a beginner's set.

I didn't put in enough ink.

But once I put in too much ink, everything went along smoothly. I made practice prints on newspaper first.

 

 Then I made a couple on watercolor paper.

Then I got brave and made a print on a shirt.

I had to stop after that, not because of the smudges, but because freezer paper starts to deteriorate after ten or twelve prints, and the edges of the leaves were getting a little fuzzy in places.

Conclusions:
1. I need a rack or something to support the edges of the screen when I put it down between prints. I unthinkingly put the screen down on a piece of newspaper on which I'd already set it down before and picked up some smudges, which were then transferred to the shirt. EXPLETIVES!!!!!
2. The shapes that get printed always look smaller than the shapes that were cut. I cut some little leaves to litter the forest floor, one or two of which look like more mistakes than like leaves.
3. Seriously, it is not worth all the agony of making decisions what to draw or attempting to draw terribly. I have friends who can draw. I will be calling them soon. You know who you are.
4. Even a non-graphic arts person like me can see about a million and a half possibilities for silk screen art, and they don't all involve T-shirts.

So, I'm going to spend another hour or so attempting to draw and maybe cut out another stencil.