Monosilkscreen Process

I enjoyed another monosilkscreen workshop at the Mesa Arts Center, the past 2 Saturdays. The workshop is offered every quarter and since there is so much time between classes, I feel pressure to be ready and take advantage of the time available.  So for the week or more before each session, I plan what I want to print and cut stencils and pull color chips for each concept.

So with the stencil on the right I printed 3 backgrounds of a solid yellow/green. When that dried I mixed up a darker green and put the stencil down arcing from bottom left to to top right.  For fun I pulled a 4th print of the stencil and the yellow/green over a plain white paper.

 When those dried I reversed the stencil putting it on the right side and tried to mix a transparent blue/green.  But my first two efforts were not transparent enough and covered the first stencil more than I wanted. So I kept adding more transparent base until I got to this point on the last two:

Not satisfied but that's what I had to work with.  After the first Saturday class, I decided to print with a stencil I had used for diffused relief on these two prints.

I mixed up a very transparent (finally) blue and printed them both today.  I was very happy with the result.  I am not sure these are the final versions of these prints but so far so good.

As always I want to thank Nieves Manje and Jeremy Yocum for all their help and expertise.  The size of these images are 25" x 17.5".