I am going to stick my neck out here and put up this blog in parts, before I even know what the finished piece will look like. Typically, I only find out the results when I think to myself, that is enough, it looks exciting to me. This can be a long or short journey, and sometimes the whole thing is scrapped and used as quilting bits later. Each step along the way is predicated on the prior step. Let’s see what happens together.

Sketch of trees looking up to the canopy.

This story starts with a walk that I took in England several years ago when my husband and I were visiting friends. Regular walks were the staple of the trip.

I love to photograph trees and so I took a series of tree photos. Later, during what we like to call “rest period”, I made sketches of several of the trees from the original photos, visually scaling them up to a larger dimension.

Now, much later, I have just constructed a silkscreen frame from pre-cut pieces, stretched silkscreen mesh, and staples just as Karen Bell showed me! She has made all kinds of silkscreens, using hand painting as well as emulsion. Take a look at her work! Here is a link to her picture in the studio on her web page.

Now that I have a blank screen I will paint it. First, the silkscreen is painted with a blue solution which, even after it is dry, is water soluble. These blue areas (the trees themselves) will become the blank bits of screen through which the silkscreening paint is pushed using a squeegee. The second step, after the blue solution is dry, the brown solution is “pulled” over the entire silkscreen using the squeegee. After that is dry, the silkscreen is washed and the blue dissolves leaving the dried red/brown solution. Here is what it looks like in the next image.

Coming to the next blog, results of the test silkscreening of the tree and painting the cloth after silkscreening! Stay tuned….