At the start of the process I choose one of my drawings and put it into repeat.
This is a primary drawing taken from a primary photograph of a plant I found at Kew Gardens in London.
After getting a rough idea of what the repeat would look like I scanned the original drawing into the Computer and redrew it in Adobe Illustrator using the pen tool. This took me much longer than I expected. To draw all the details in, put the pattern into repeat and then make the four different layers I wanted for different colour separations, it took me three days and a half to complete. It took me a while to adjust to illustrator and figure out how things work because it was a long time since I used it last (google and YouTube helped me out with a few difficulties). It also took me a while to figure out how to put the repeat onto different pages but in the exact same place on each page ( copy and pasting each layer of the pattern didn't work as it would paste onto different places of new canvas on illustrator).
As an end result I new I wanted four different colours: for this I needed four different layers of the repeat. ( e.g. one page would have just the leaves, and another page would have just the flower...) so I colour coordinated the different layers of the whole repeated pattern in illustror by changing the colour of the lines. (I had the outer leaf and sections of the stem in blue, the inner leaf in green, the main bit of the flower in red and the detailed bits of the flower in yellow). I also put a tiny square in the bottom left corner of the repeated pattern as a starting point of reference for the laser cutter and also to make sure the pattern is copy and pasted in the exact same place on each canvas. I copied the whole colour-coordinated repeated pattern and the small square and pasted it three more times onto three different a1 canvases in illustrator. I then kept one colour on each page and deleted the rest of the different colours ( one canvas would only have the blue lines; the green, red and yellow lines were deleted).
I then had to make sure there was no overhang of the design off the canvas, especially the left and bottom side of the page ( the idea is that the laser cutter will start cutting from the small square in the bottom left hand corner, if there is any overhang past this point, the laser cutter would start cutting from that point instead. This means the layered design would not match up).
In order to delete any overhang, it's not just a simple case of using the rubber tool to rub it out, the scissor tool is required and you have to individually cut through any anchor points and then highlight and delete the detached overhang lines.
Stencil material:
This was one of my major mistakes... I thought it would be a good idea to make stencils out of acetate and then it will be reusable so I could do as many different colour pull through as I wanted with that stencil. I bought 4 A1 acetate sheets from an art shop in Newcastle called Details ( they cost about £4.25 each!) and then took these to the laser cutter to cut out my design on. Because my repeated design was highly detailed and big in scale it took about 3 hours for laser cutter to cut out the four layers of my design. I then out these laser cut acetate sheets onto four different screens and measured them all up accurately so they would match up on the paper when printed. I had three sheets of A1 cartridge paper stretched on the printing table with painted backgrounds ready to print onto. I got my first screen and pulled pigment ink through and as I lifted the screen to move it across to the next paper along the acetate reacted with the pigment ink and curled up to an extent that I could not print with it again. I probably bought unprintable acetate. I didn't think about it at time and because it was from an art shop I presumed it would be fine to print with.
Note to self...when buying material that I have never used befor always do a small sample test before the final thing!
Attempt numero dos...
Turns out you can laser cut more that one sheet of paper at a time! I had to wait another week to use the laser cutter as we only have access to it on Thursday mornings. This time I was able to cut three sheet of cartridge paper at a time. This meant that I was able to do three different colour-ways if I wanted to.
I ended up keeping one set of the laser cut pattern on catridge paper as I liked it the way it was. I will possibly draw back into it on a later date and hand it in as a final. From the remaining stencils I was able to print seven lots of finals all on different background colours. I tried stencil printing onto an A1 acetate and it was a success! The colours came out really well.
I am so happy with the end result of my stencil prints, it was defiantly worth it and next time I should hopefully be much quicker.
If you want to see final prints previews follow me on instagram @Shiorinaruse
