Screen Printing Play Date

Beth and I got together a couple of weeks back and  played with our silk screens.  I tried printing with thickened dye paste using torn newspaper as a mask.  On the first one I layered different colors using torn newspaper as a mask in each layer.  I was hoping for a variety of colors as they overlapped in different layers.  I started with light and moved to dark.  Here is the result with some detail shots.

This last detail shot show a resist by dried soda ash.  I had forgotten the material in a bucket of soda ash.  The soda ash dried leaving crystals.  I decided to print over the crystals to see what would happen.  Interesting resist, don't you think?

The second experiment started out like the first with torn newspaper acting as a mask.  For this one I started dark and then randomly scraped light dye paste using a credit card.  Well, actually it was an expired insurance card.  Beth was a little  nervous that I was using the current card.  Here are the results along with detail shots.

As you might be able to tell, I did put a rubber drawer liner under the fabric before I scraped the blue and orange to cause some texture.

I have to say I hate both of these pieces. Not that I would call them failures...yet.  I think they just need several more layers of something to have the interest I like in my surface design experiments.