screens

Shirts

Tuesday 5/25/10

Today was the last day of this project. I started it off by laying out all of my t-shirts with my teacher and taking pictures of all of them together. This was cool because it really showed the project and work that I did altogether as a whole. I had been taking pictures of individual shirts for the blog, but it looks much better when they are all together. We then took a few pictures of all my remaining screens. After this, the rest of the day was filled by cleaning and recycling the last twenty of my screens. This took a very long time. There are a lot of steps that it takes to complete this process. It is not very fun work, but It had to be done. I am now finished with my senior project and it feels great. Throughout these 2 and a half weeks I made 15 original designs, printed 11 of these designs to vellum, burned 24 screens, and printed 38 t-shirts of the 11 designs that I liked best.

new shirts

Front



Back

monday 5/24/10

Today was my last day to print shirts. I printed two more designs onto 10 more t-shirts. One of the designs was a simple one color design, so that was an easy and quick shirt to print. However, my last design was a three color design so that took a lot of work to line up. This one was particularly detailed so it was especially hard to get lined up correctly. There were also two designs on this shirt, so after I was done printing the first one, I had to go back set up another screen and print onto 6 t-shirts one more time. I also got a head start on cleaning and recycling all of my screens, which is what I am going to have to do all day tomorrow. I was able to get this over with for three of my screens, but that means I still have more than twenty to do tomorrow.

Weekly reflection

This week was a great week in the graphics room. The first week was very productive, but not as rewarding because I had no finished products. This week I was able to surpass my goal of making 7 different designs into t-shirts, which is what i thought I would be able to make and what I wrote on my proposal, and I already have made 9 different designs into shirts. I am very satisfied with how all of my designs came out. Most of them surprised me at how much better they look on shirts than they did on printer paper. I was able to make multiple of every shirt and I now have a stack of 26 finished t-shirts and one sweatshirt. I also have all the screens burnt for two more designs that should be able to turn into t-shirts on monday. However, at least one of the screens for each design has a problem with it so I am nervous as to how they might affect the shirts.
This week was full of much more labor than the first one. Most of my time the first week was spent sitting in front of a computer making a collection of designs. But this week I was finished designing for the most part (I still needed to make minor changes on some designs, but no completely new ones), and my time was spent, burning, spraying, taping, stretching, coating, recycling, lining up screens, and printing them. most of this work is not as fun as designing, but it is more rewarding. Every step takes you one step closer to the satisfaction of a final product and the capability of wearing your own art.
These steps all have a significant amount of room for error. While most of it went flawlessly, I definitely ran into my fair share of frustration. However, most of these problems had relatively simple solutions and provided me with more learning experience. While it was obnoxious at the time, I am thankful for these issues because now I am aware of those possibilities and the solutions necessary to make the best of them.

New shirts

Friday 5/21/10

Today I went in and immediately started taping up my screens that were ready to burn today. I then made one shirt that was a one color design after setting it all up. I then cleaned up and made another one color design onto a shirt. This was a pill big light reaction shirt. I cleaned up from that as well and the press was still being used by other kids so I could not set up my two color design yet. I coated a bunch of screens in the darkroom in the meantime. After I was finished so were the other kids on the press. I then lined up by two screens and then made the shirt. After cleaning up from this, I fixed some more designs on the computer, printed them to vellum and then burnt them all to screens so that I can make my final shirts on monday.

New shirts

Thursday 5/20/10

Today was another very productive day. I went into school and the first thing I did was burn a screen for a pill bug light reaction shirt that I can hopefully make tommorow. I burnt a screen first because there were other kids using the press. After I was done burning, they were also done with the press. I then took one of the screens I burnt yesterday and made shirts with it. I made two shirts of this design. Afterwards, I cleaned up and then set up to make another shirt with another screen I burnt yesterday. This screen gave me a lot more problems than the first one. This is a large screen and it is the one that got messed up the first time I burnt it. The large screens are hard to control as well as the little ones. This time I kept getting too much ink on the other side so the design was getting smudged. However, with the help of my teacher we figured it out and I ended up making three t-shirts of this design. However, two of them I am not so happy with because they did not come out perfectly. After I was done with this screen I cleaned up and took a break from making shirts. I went back and fixed some designs on the computer so that I could print them to vellum. I then went back to the press and layed out my last design that I could do today because it was the last one I had screens ready for. This was a three color design so It took some time to lay it out. After it was ready, I put it onto 4 t-shirts. I then cleaned up from this process. Afterwards, I took the designs that I recently printed to vellum and burnt them onto screens. This means I have three more designs that are ready to put on t-shirts tommorow.

New shirts

sorry the pictures are so blurry. my camera is pretty cheap and it is not working so well.

Wednesday 5/19/10

Today was my most productive day so far. I went into school at the normal time and went straight into the silkscreening darkroom to check out how many screens we had. To my surprise the entire cabinet was filled. This was an awesome surprise. It turns out that my teacher had after-school detention duty and had all the kids coat screens. I then set up my first three color design on the printer. This takes a while because you have to carefully make sure that each color is aligned with the other colors even though they are different screens. I tested the print and it came out perfectly. I then printed it onto three t-shirts. After I cleaned up from this, I set up my next two color design. I lined up the colors and then tested it and then printed a few t-shirts with this design on it. I tried to print another design that was only one color, but the screen was messed up and needs to be re-burned. I then printed another three color design onto vellum and burnt all three screens needed to make that shirt tommorow. I also printed two, other designs onto vellum and burnt those screens as well. I finished the day by coating a few more screens to keep the cabinet full because that is such a nice sight.

first printed T

tuesday 5/18/10

Today was a much more productive day than yesterday. I started off discouraged because my t-shirts were still not there when I got into to school. However, the screens I coated yesterday were dry and ready to burn so I burnt one of my two color designs onto the last two screens that were ready. Then I had to to stretch more screens in order to coat them so I can burn them soon. This is a rather lengthy process that requires all sorts of tools. after I stretched these screens, I went into the darkroom and coated them all. This was 7 screens in total. After all this work it was about 1:OO and I could not think of much else I could do without my t-shirts, but then my teacher got a call from the office saying that my shirts finally got there. This was exciting and I ended up printing my first t-shirt before I left. I printed three t-shirts and one sweatshirt with this design on it. It was only a one color design, so once it is ready, it is easy to make a lot of shirts quickly. It feels great to finally have a finished product. There will be more to come tomorrow!

Monday 5/17/10

Today was a much less productive day than I had hoped for. I got into school early and realized that there was a substitute teacher in the room. I didn't expect E-show to be away today. The graphics room has a much different vibe when he is not around because there are much stricter rules and guidelines, such as no using the printer and some other things are off limits as well. However, the bigger curveball for me today was that my order of t-shirts was supposed to be here by today, but it had not come yet either. I am at the point in my project where the t-shirts are crucial and I need them to go forward.
Today wasn't all unsuccessful though. I was able to coat a bunch of screens that I needed to coat in order to burn them tomorrow. I coated about 6 or 7 screens. One of them however, got instantly ruined by a bunch of confused freshman that disregarded the teachers orders to stay away from that equipment today. Now I have to re-coat that screen. I was also able to burn the three screens needed to make my first three color design t-shirt. The other screens I have burnt already are all only one color. I hope tommorow I have my shirts and I can produce some nice finished products.

Weekly reflection

I was surprised at how much work I was able to get done this week. I did not expect to get so many designs done in only three days, but when I would get in a designing groove, I would keep working hard and the time would fly by. It was very surprising. While I was designing though, I discovered many new techniques and effects that I was unaware of before.
I was done with all of the designs I intended to make by the third day which gave me an earlier start on the rest of the processes than I expected. This is definitly a good thing though, because I am running into more problems in this section than I expected. This taught me that the designing aspect of making shirts is definitely the easiest. The rest of the work is a lot of steps that all have possibilities of something going wrong, whether it is a printer malfunction, a poorly coated screen, a bad burn on the screen, or even the final step of putting the image onto a shirt can go wrong the easiest. I am yet to be satisfied with a final product, but I know that when it comes it is a great feeling.
I am really happy with this work. Although it is weird being back in my old high school, it is awesome to be able to free my creative mind and make art that I am capable of. I have always liked art a lot, but I am not great at many forms of it. I realized that I am most capable of making art on the computer. This is cool because doing this allows me to go further with those pieces of art and eventually put them on shirts. This is the best part because I can then wear it around and it is a constant reminder of the work that went into it.

Friday 5/14/10

Today I began by printing a lot of my designs to vellum. My big designs were simple because they get printed to a different printer, but the 8.5 by 11 inch designs were tricky because the printer was still acting up. It was especially hard because I have to print out each color separately and the printer would not work consistently. This was frustrating, but I ended up getting about half my designs printed today. After I stopped printing, I burnt another one of my screens. This was also frustrating because it did not come out perfect. I thought it might be good enough, so i tried printing it onto a piece of construction paper and an undershirt that I did not care about. Neither of these came out good enough to satisfy me so I am going to have to reburn that screen, which is unfortunate. After cleaning up from this I prepared my other screen that was ready to go. This means I had to tape all the edges and put paint on it. I then put this design onto a shirt as well. This was another shirt I did not really care about. My shirt order from online is not here yet, so i was just testing out these screens and getting a feel for it. This design did not come out perfect either because the shirt got smudged when I was taking it off the press. This was a bummer, but it wasnt the screens fault, so next time when I do this design for real it should not be a problem. After all this, I had some more time to kill so I went into the darkroom and I burnt one more of my designs onto a screen.

Thursday 5/13/10 6:00 PM

Today was a much less creative day than the others have been. I arrived at school around 8:00 AM and got to work recycling old screens. I will need a lot of screens in order to make all my shirts so this will take a lot of work. I tried cleaning screens in order to get them to the point where I can coat them in QTX. I was able to get about 5 or 6 screens to this point, but many others were lost causes and were not salvageable. I coated a few other screens that had been cleaned by other students as well. After all this I went back to the computer in order to make some more final touches to some designs. I had to outline all the text on every design in order to print the designs to vellum. I also had to doublecheck that the multi-color designs were layered correctly. I tried to print my first design onto vellum, but had many printer issues and had to trouble shoot for while. After about an hour of this, i figured out the problem, with the help of my teacher, and my design printed well. For this specific design I had to cut the printed sheet of vellum in order to move parts of the design around. I then took it into the silkscreen darkroom and burnt it onto screen. It was a successful burn and now I have one design ready to go onto a t-shirt.

Wednesday 5/12/10 4:00 PM

I went to school at 8 this morning and began making more designs. I made 4 more designs which brought me to my goal of 15 potential designs. I then went back and reworked all my designs to turn them into final drafts. This meant spreading the colors between different layers of Illustrator and fixing some little details here and there. After this was done I placed an order online for all the blank t-shirts that I will need in order to print my designs.

Tuesday 5/11/10 2:20 PM

Today was my second day of work and I spent the whole day in front of a computer. I made 6 more rough drafts of potential t-shirt designs. three of them are large 11-17 inch designs which is the biggest that is possible with the resources I am given. The others are smaller designs. They also vary in number of colors that I am using. My teacher critiqued them at the end of the day and most have small adjustments that need to be made. Today was a successful day of designing.

Monday 5/10/10 2:45 PM

This was my first day of my senior project. I reported to my old high school before I went to proctor, Hingham High School, at 8:00 AM. I went right to the graphics room and got to work. I first recycled some old screens that I will be able to use for myself when I need them. This is hard work so I only got to do about 5 of them. I then sat down behind the computer for the rest of the day and made 5 rough draft designs of potential t-shirts. After I had made these designs, i printed out copies on paper and My teacher Mr E-show critiqued them for me. Some need some work, but others are alright as is. I then left school at 2:30 and walked home.