On Saturday I joined the Lake Shore Arts at 2422 Lake Shore Blvd West for their final print making workshop of the year.
Charlotte greeted me and directed me to hang up my jacket and sign in. A fellow artist showed me their work and told me how to do it and then Jenny came over to talk with me more about it.
I sat down in front of a fine mesh screen that was prepared with borders and a box of watercolour crayons. I have never used watercolour crayons or coloured on mesh before so I had no expectations and decided to simply doodle.
I took my time and experimented with what would happen if I layered colours or if I tried to touch them up as I went. I looked back to front to see how spaces would be filled in, or not, and what it looked like before it went onto paper. I found that you couldn’t blend the medium due to the fine mess as the base but I was more curious to see how it would come out on paper.
Jenny brought me over to a table where they had set up paper, a paste in a bucket, and a collection of squeegee like tools. She put a goopy line of clear paste on the top of the board and used the squeegee tool to scrape the paste evenly over the art with pressure to push the colour out onto the paper underneath. After 3 passes with the tool we lifted the board to see the result.
It was interesting to see that where I had added layers of colour to make elements more visible they stayed in the mesh. The leaves, for example, were the first element I added with the vines yet they never left the mesh in their centers.
Each print brought out different elements and levels of colour from the mesh screen. I would have stopped at 3 but Amara was curious to see what would happen if we tried some more so I quickly became curious too. We did 2 more prints and discovered that the leaves didn’t come out on any of them.
It was fun to see how the colours varied from print to print, with 2 and 3 being my favourites.
