Blog Entry #10 - Silk Screening

For this alternative process, it was much more time consuming and complicated then the acrylic lift, but I was happy with the result. I had to get the silk screen, paint on the special ink in the darkroom, and then expose it to light while a negative was overtop. I then washed off the paint so that it was a see through image on the canvas. I can now use it to paint that image onto whatever I choose.

I chose this photo for the silk screen because I thought the landscape looked like a painting and would be effective as a print to transfer to other mediums, like a T-shirt or canvas. The image breaks the composition rules because the path through the forest is in the middle of the picture rather than following the rule of thirds. But this works well in this case to give depth to the landscape and pull the viewer’s eyes into the picture to explore the forest in the distance. I was attracted by the ghostly figures created by the tall pines and the leafless birch trees with their silver bark. Together with the other features such as the rocks, moss and fog, this scene reminds me of a prehistoric setting where you wonder what strange creatures lurk in the forest.

Blog Entry #9 - Acrylic Lift

One of the two alternative processes i chose was an acrylic lift, which is when you paint a substance onto paper and get the image onto that substance so that it is an easily manipulated piece of acrylic paper. For the use of the picture i decided to make a CD case, as this paper easily folded and unfolded. I used 12 layers of the substance to get the optimum consistency.

I knew straight away which photograph I wanted to use for this process. The funky colourful graffiti image lends itself perfectly to the acrylic because it gives a modern, cool look to the image that suits the graffiti and makes it into a hi tech material with a texture that makes the graffiti look three dimensional. I folded the acrylic to make a CD holder because the image reminded me of the kind of photo you would find on CD cover and I liked the way you could see the outline of the silver CD inside the cover. I love the way that you can unfold the acrylic and it goes flat again and you can recycle it into a different form.


The image itself works really well even though the subject is in the centre of the picture and there are mergers, which you normally try to avoid, between the black paint strokes of the graffiti and the subject’s head and back pack strap. But breaking the rules have the effect of making Max look more like he is part of the grafitti but with the opposite colour balance since he is mostly in black with a small splash of colour and pattern on his shirt.