Kid Friendly Print

My goal for the week is to complete a "kid friendly" piece for an upcoming exhibition. This summer, the Printmakers' Network of Southern New England (http://www.printmakersnetwork.org/) will be exhibiting a collection of prints at the Childrens National Medical Center in Washington DC. The May deadline is fast approaching so time is of the essence.

Last week was dedicated to sketching and idea development. I spent some time trying to decide what would be appropriate for the venue, appeal to kids of various ages, and also be interesting for me. Searching for inspiration, I gravitated toward my daughter's old toy box. Finding a bag of Match Box Cars, I dumped them out on the floor and played around with various options. Since this is for a DC institution and traffic is a daily issue, I decided to use the tiny cars to depict the typical traffic in and around the Beltway.

Next decision; what printmaking technique to use. I decided to do a crayon resist serigraph. I haven't done a screen print in awhile and I liked the idea of using the humble crayon to depict an everyday scenario using an iconic toy as the subject matter. I spent last week working out compositions and preparing my screen. Everything's now ready to go and I hope to get a few colors down by the end of the day on Monday. (Also keeping my fingers crossed that it will turn out well enough to exhibit!)

I replaced the fabric on an old screen, set up my hinges, and used screen filler to mask out the print's borders. I have 3 "pegs" set into my screen base so I attached strips of paper with corresponding holes to my printing paper. This should give me good registration for each color.

The drawing is placed on the base and protected by a sheet of acetate. Crayon will be added successively, after each color is printed, until the screen is completely blocked out. Color number one, first thing Monday morning.