Printmaking with Drew

>Today was yet another magical morning at Summer Spree. I had the chance to spend the entire morning in Drew's printmaking workshop, something only offered this week! Drew worked with the Yellow, Red and Orange groups today.  All created incredible stencil prints, as well as contributed to a collaborative silk screen piece. 

Beginning the workshop, we started simple with a pencil in hand and ideas to be set free on a blank piece of paper. Drew suggested our drawings have a common theme of things in the air (after all, the sky's the limit here at Summer Spree). Some of the brilliant ideas shared included birds, stars, the planet Pluto, clouds, sunshine, the earth, rain, wind, airplanes and more. 

As we did this, Drew demonstrated how to establish a successful stencil print; the key to this success---keeping the stencil moist with fresh, wet, ink. The first coat of ink slabbed onto the stencil is what we learned is called the 'flood coat'; this is where the ink is put into the carved stencil design. 

[ Drew applies the ink onto the stencil ]

The second coat we had bit more fun with as we all created mechanical sound effects while applying more ink onto the stencil (after all, we were practically human machines with all of the hard work we were giving in inking up the stencil).   

                       [Printmaking really works the muscles!]

After completing the stencil prints, we each made a personal contribution on the collaborative silk screen. In doing so, we painted our original designs using screen filler (also known as 'blue goo'). 

[ Ammar assists with the blue goo ]

[ Final touches to the collaborative silk screen ]

The silk screen is where our creativity really flowed out as we drew different images from the sky onto the screen. Drew helped complete the final process in which the blue goo will soon no longer appear blue, but rather, clear... check it out:

Little did we know that printmaking is such a process, but we sure did enjoy every minute of it! We appreciate Drew for teaching us all about this process, and thank him again for dedicating his time and talent this week at Summer Spree. 

 [ our stencil print designs ]