Longing……For……For……For……

How did the London trip go last Thursday?

I can say that apart from being a boring 2 hour journey plus some interesting nice talks with some classmates on the way there and back, it turned out to be a very interesting day for me. As we got off the coach we walk up trafalgar road and just to the left side we approached the royal academy where it housed the work of artists such as Ai WeiWei. I primarily wanted to go to London to see his work as he is one of my best inspirations and also use him as research.

Ai WeiWei had a significant amount of nice works made from natural different woods and other materials to make most of his sculptures. In the court yard area just where the entrance is, I came across some trees that looked like dead trees but actually it is a mixture of dead logs found in the mountains. I thought these were very nice and given me a clear story of how old things die away but can still be used to create something very special such as these trees.

 What kind of meaning do Ai WeiWei’s works point out to people?

All of the works that are shown above have given me some clear inspiration of what kind of work Ai WeiWei makes and how his work influences directly on Chinese government. His artwork to me points out towards a political aspect within his art where he constantly sources his thoughts secretly through his artwork making a political statement against what the chinese government are doing wrong.

Some of his works clearly shows the pain and frustration that Ai WeiWei has been through and seems like he is regarded as a free speaker in England of what he feels against the chinese government but has been restrained from doing so many times by the Chinese. I think that the reactions of his artwork by his audience are deeply astonished because seeing some chinese viewers there seem also frustrated to what the chinese government are doing to their own people.

I noticed one Chinese guy in the gallery watching the bulldozers destroy Ai WeiWei’s studio and he looked like he could not bare to watch it being destroyed, shuck his head with frustration and moved on like there is no hope… I think that Ai WeiWei’s work acts like a free speaker against the Chinese government and how these kind of rights impact not only us british but Chinese people as a whole. To me his work is quite strong and is a long ongoing theme that will always keep fighting to make a strong point with many Chinese supporters behind him and his work. This was how I felt when I was there at the gallery and has left me wondering what great artworks I can do of my own and have gained some new ideas that should turn out to be successful…

What have I done about the third layer?

Since the last post of my successful second layer print I quoted that I would have the third layer stencil and silkscreen done by Friday morning. But… because I was in London to see a gallery on thursday it meant that the technician had the whole day plus friday morning to get this done. Sadly when I came back the following day it was not done resulting more delay within my print work. But in the end he did get round to doing my third stencil for me at about 3:00 and by then I was basically prepared.

Were there any problems with the silkscreen stencil and printing process?

I thought that the stencil looked nicely done with the smoothness effect of the ink just laying on the inkjet acetate. But… for some unknown weird reason, the photo emulsion does not like sticking to the silkscreen resulting in deformed and missing outlines of my stencil image. This results in more frustration knowing that my image cannot be mended now until monday so thats 4 days of waiting to do my third layer.

The silkscreen stencil seems like it has not had enough thick layering of photo emulsion or the fact that the photo emulsion is out of date, meaning it is unusable and need to order some more fresh emulsion.

How will I be able to get through this problem?

I think that the only way out of this continuous cycled problem is to try again with the same emulsion to see if it works on monday but if not, then I will try get Shaun Camp to order in some fresh photo emulsion that will work better. I think the only way to know for sure is to try a new silkscreen stencil again with the photo emulsion to see if the same problem happens again and then I will know what to do.

So… What will I do in the meantime?

I think I will have a well earned break over the weekend after having the frustration and a whole day in London… I will try do some more research in the comfort of my own leisure on other artists that compare to my work and will also reflect back on my London trip last thursday to recap on what it taught me in the end. Roll on monday… a good start to any week.

Feel free to watch or browse through my short 5-6 minutes of commentary with unexpected results within my third stencil.

How well did it go with printing the second layer of Chairman Mao?

To be blatantly honest the second stencil layer that I had projected onto silkscreen worked very well even though there was a small hole left through the photo emulsioning that I had covered up with filler. Also the skin colour that I mixed up yesterday worked a good treat today indeed and so did the second layer stencil that I had projected onto silkscreen.

I thought that it looked quite nice the way I lined up the second layer to go onto the first layer and looked quite nice without fail. I basically used a plastic film to print the second layer on first and then once the first print was placed on the plastic film, I could then use that to line up the second layer to go on top of my first layer prints. This method I thought works very well indeed and because of this I manage to line up the second layer nicely with the first layer.

Were there any problems juring this second layering process?

I felt that today, despite having some good prints done I faced two major obstacles today which made me feel quite frustrated the fact that my prints were in danger of being destroyed.

Printing Colours – The pigment curse…

Yes… when I used the mixed skin colours today for my printing, I discovered something that could have stopped my second layer of printing for today… I noticed that as I was using the ink more and more, I say that the colour of purple was about halfway down to the bottom of the cup that I was using, meaning that the pigment has traveled through the skin colour! This frustrated me a lot as I did spend 10 minutes on mixing it well and could not see any sign of the purple colour insight so I knew that it was well mixed.

Then the next day the pigment obviously sinked to the bottom. Before getting the brown I had to mix the green with the red that made purple so this tells me that purple is the predominant pigment and is probably why this happened I am not sure but will make sure I mix the colours like that on the day of printing from now on.

Silkscreen – The sticky photo emulsion curse…

Ok so after the colour disaster, I felt fine and had enough of mixed colour to do the rest of my first layer prints in the end. but… after a while of putting pressure when silkscreening through the stencil to print the second layer, I noticed that the paper I was printing on liked sticking to my silkscreen… At first I was not sure why it was happening but when I looked underneath the silkscreen, I noticed that some of the photo emulsion was not dry and was turning soft which meant it was sticking to my prints and making marks on them!

This frustrated me even more because this is not something you expect when trying to print through an photo emulsion stencil right? so to solve this I manage to stick some tape underneath where it was sticky and manage to print the other ones just fine but still ruined two prints…

What will I do next as part of this printing process?

I will go away to have a good think on the next time I go to print the third layer which will be on friday, hoping I can be well prepared for the next session of printing without any more problems to face… I think a good break in London aught to do the trick seeing some nice artwork by Ai WeiWEi which will be exciting to see as I base him as one of my best inspirations for comparing English and China together. I will keep updated on my next session of printing hopefully on Friday.

Please feel free to watch this short 5 minutes of commentary about my obstacles I faced today and the final outcome of my prints.

What latest updates have I found with my second Chairman Mao layer? 

I manage to get my printing technician to print out my second layer for me for my chairman mao image and it manage to turn out very nice. It looked very clear and good enough to expose onto the photo emulsion so he exposed it for me which took about 20 minutes. It came out very good but there was just one small problem, it had a small hole where it was not exposed enough so I just filled that in quite easily using the red filler and brush.

I also knew that the time was gonna come where I would eventually have to make one of the toughest screen inking colours for one of my prints and that colour is skin colour which was not gonna be easy for me.

Were there any problems?

Yes there was… and it lasted me for 4 hours of constant ink mixing to try make the right colour formula. I basically had to make almost every known colour to try make the colour of skin. What is most frustrating for me, is that the pigments are all wrong… when I mixed a n ice green with some red it did not turn to brown how I expected but it turned to purple instead… lol… I mean how crazy is that?

How did I solve this colour twisting phenomenon?

So it was almost like trying to find the skin colour blind folded, but when I finally managed to mix a good brown, I used Blue + Yellow = Green + Red = Purple + Yellow = Brown? Really? and… Brown + more yellow = Yellow Ochre + White = Skin colour – Peach or Carci colour. So that was the result for the day for my inking and pigment twisting equation, solved and dusted within 3 hours….

What Will I do next?

So now… I am free to go ahead with my second layer to print the main colour of my Chairman Mao’s face. With any luck my eyes will be as good as that ink when it touches the surface of that paper, Hopefully will be the same colour and will look great. Will keep you updated when I go to print the second layer.

Please feel free to watch or browse through my 6 minute commentary of mixing colours and seeing the end result… 

What is the outcome for the latest batch of prints?

Well… I could say that it was pretty successful in the end using the new green colour that I mixed up and it seems to be the right colour this time. I do not think that I would say no to continuing doing the next layers on the first green colours. I think that it would be interesting to have the two different green colours side by side and the time I have finished the rest of the layers, it would be nice to see what looks best in the end.

What is the next part of this process I will do?

I will have to prepare my next layer ready for printing on Monday morning and with any luck it will print out successfully. I will make sure that it is the right measurement format so that it can be silkscreened nicely on top of the first printed layer. I am looking forward to seeing this image taking shape after printing the second layer and with any luck it will look neat.

Feel free to watch this short 2 minutes of detailed commentary of the final outcome of my refined green colours…