couture – Random Thoughts

Cookin’

(March 12, 2016)

Finally! A stylish apron!

“EXTERNALIZE REALITY”

(March 5, 2016)

Every pair of pants should have a manifesto.

Couture: Dark

(November 12, 2015)

I forgot that I printed a shirt with luminescent paint earlier this summer. I just went into the darkest of dark rooms, flashed it, and took some photos.

I’m done experimenting with printing t-shirts for this year, at least. Certain rooms of the apt. are kinda chaotic while I’m printing, so it gets kinda frustrating as the months pass… And I’ve been busy with other stuff this time, so it’s taken quite a while. (MST3K is very important when printing t-shirts.) Cheese, too. … Continue reading Couture: The End

Couture: Mariscal

(September 5, 2015)

Yup. Mariscal. Very cozy. But I wanted to experiment with mixing colours on the screen… Hm… I dunno… That’s not a good colour combination. It does look a bit better in person than on the picture, though. I saw a video of somebody using this technique, but with a thinner paint so that the border … Continue reading Couture: Mariscal

Couture: Caro Again

(September 2, 2015)

I found this scan from last year that I hadn’t used yet. It’s by Caro, and (again) it’s from an early issue of Raw Magazine. Hey! Another perfect exposure! I seem to have cracked the code, at least on smaller screens. For larger screens, I’m still getting uneven exposures and wash-off at the edges… Yay. … Continue reading Couture: Caro Again

Couture: Alpha

(September 2, 2015)

After doing so many printing experiments based on comics, I thought it might be nice to do one based on a film. Like Alphaville. Eh. The screen for the lamp turned out … not very good. The eye was kinda successful, but kinda more creepy than I expected. Yeesh. Oh well.

Couture: Burns Agains

(August 31, 2015)

I wanted to do a print that would end at the neck, so when I saw this Charles Burns image, I just went with it. And it just worked. I used a pretty soft squeegee. But I got a pretty heavy paint deposit around the collar: Looks quite punk, though, so I don’t mind. But … Continue reading Couture: Burns Agains

Couture: Panter Mash

(August 26, 2015)

I wanted to try more over-printing to see whether anything exciting happens. So I took one of the Jimbo t-shirts I did a couple of weeks ago and made one final Daltokyo logo print. Nothing weird happened, but that looks kinda nice! (Both the Jimbo image and the Daltokyo logo are by Gary Panter.)

Couture: Fury Duplicate

(August 26, 2015)

This one went well until I got to the black layer: I forgot to clean the squeegee after the gold layer, so the black one got a bit muddled. Which isn’t a good thing if you’re doing this kind of print. If it isn’t crisp it looks like a mistake. Which it is. I usually … Continue reading Couture: Fury Duplicate

Couture: Daltokyo

(August 26, 2015)

The very first print I made (before I had anything proper to print on) was the Daltokyo logo. So I wanted to print it properly. Oops! That didn’t really go too well… Let’s try again with gold ink for max bling. Eek! The screen has been improperly washed, and that’s the problem. Oh, well. (Daltokyo … Continue reading Couture: Daltokyo

Couture: Fury

(August 23, 2015)

I thought it might be fun to try to do overlapping prints, so I chose an image from Mark Newgarden’s “Love’s Savage Fury”. I knew I was using the wrong tool to apply the photo-sensitive emulsion to the screen: It got all thick and bubbly and … wrong. I wanted to do some smaller prints … Continue reading Couture: Fury

Couture: Jack Again

(August 23, 2015)

I did a Jerry Moriarty t-shirt last week, but then I went through the transparencies I printed last summer and found another one. So I had to do another print. For this shirt, I did without any pins or anything to line up the different bits of the print. (The bar vs the rest of … Continue reading Couture: Jack Again

Couture: Caro

(August 19, 2015)

I wanted to try to screen print a pre-rastered image, so I chose this rather striking face from a strip by Caro in one of the early Raw issues. The images from that comic have remained vivid in my mind since I was a teenager. Especially from the last panel. (Not featured here.) If you’ve … Continue reading Couture: Caro

Couture: Max

(August 18, 2015)

I thought I’d stray a bit from my usual hunting ground of early 80’s American punk-ish imagery… by picking something totally different. Car-Boy by Max Andersson. Yeah! Different! But what I want to attempt this time is doing a more tightly semi-registered print by using pins and stuff to mark off where the screen is … Continue reading Couture: Max

Couture: Muñoz

(August 16, 2015)

I thought I’d try a really subtle print. This is from a panel of the imitable José Muñoz from an early Raw issue (I reread all of Raw v1 recently (and other tabloid size stuff like Bad News) (Mouly and Spiegelman are great editors, by the way)): Perhaps too subtle… That’s better. Colours are difficult.

Couture: Interrupted

(August 16, 2015)

I said “-reverse” instead of “-negate” to ImageMagick, so I got an image with the wrong polarity. I interrupted the printer and the thing to the right is the result. I thought it was mildly interesting that the interrupted edge of the print doesn’t just stop, but kinda drops off. It’s supposed to be 100% … Continue reading Couture: Interrupted

Couture: Jimbo

(August 13, 2015)

On the previous screens, I got a bit too much emulsion wash-off. Yesterday I experimented with increasing the exposure time, thinking that if it washed off, it can’t have been exposed enough? But instead the un-exposed areas were very difficult to wash clear, and the exposed bits washed off, anyway, since I spent so much … Continue reading Couture: Jimbo

Couture: Target

(August 9, 2015)

For this screen printing experiment, I’m coating the 32TW screen with three layers of emulsion, and drying for three hours. Would that affect how much emulsion is washed off? Not really. I still got excessive wash-off at the bottom there… Hm… Perhaps my main problem is the exposure stage. Perhaps it’s not even enough? Perhaps … Continue reading Couture: Target

Couture: Windex

(August 9, 2015)

A while ago, I asked if anybody knew what caused these Diazo blotches. But then I thought: Perhaps cleaning the screen a bit might help? So I went at it with Windex and a cloth for ten minutes. It helped! Just compare the edges of that speech balloon to the red/black version. But the round … Continue reading Couture: Windex

Couture: Jack

(August 9, 2015)

I got a coarser screen (32TW) than what I’ve been using until now (43TW). I’m using “supercover” paints, which is thicker than what professional printers use. When printing on dark fabrics, they often lay down a white paint layer underneath the real colour, so they can use a less opaque paint. But you need better … Continue reading Couture: Jack

Couture: Hanawalt

(August 8, 2015)

New gear time: I got an emulsion coating trough: It’s a lot easier to apply the emulsion evenly with the trough than trying to use a squeegee, although I got a bit messy at first. But look at that dapper gentleman by Lisa Hanawalt, who made the funniest comic book of 2013. Just look at … Continue reading Couture: Hanawalt

Couture: Printer Complications

(August 8, 2015)

After finishing that Tilda Swinton Project yesterday, I didn’t have anything to do today, so I could either do something useful… Or I could start screen-printing again. So I went out and bought some new photo-sensitive emulsion, and some new inks, and off we go. Just to get started, I printed this duo-tone George Herriman … Continue reading Couture: Printer Complications

Couture: Hosed

(May 9, 2015)

I’m gearing up to do more silk screening this summer, and I’m trying to improve the process from last year. One major inconvenience was washing out the silks using a shower hose. To get enough pressure, I put a thumb over the end of the hose, and that worked. Except that that made everything in … Continue reading Couture: Hosed

Couture: Redux

(August 4, 2014)

Screen printing is lots of fun, but I’m getting bored with it now. And having the floors covered with equipment and brown paper gets old after a month. So I’m calling it quits for now. I’d like to have said that I was really good a printing now, but I’m not. My results are very … Continue reading Couture: Redux

Couture: No Coordination

(August 3, 2014)

For my final (I think) prints, I’ve selected a couple of Charles Burns drawings. I wanted to experiment with multi-coloured, but “non-registered” prints. That is, prints that don’t require sub-millimeter precision: Instead I just mask off areas with tape and print the same screen several times. That means that I have to wash and dry … Continue reading Couture: No Coordination

Kouture: Kat

(July 31, 2014)

I’m still not getting a totally consistent production line. I printed a large Krazy Kat image, and after exposing it, it washed off fine. Except at the end, where I washed a “w” off I wasn’t supposed to. So I cut a new one from packing tape and stuck it on. The result was fine: … Continue reading Kouture: Kat

Couture: Washing

(July 26, 2014)

I’ve been washing off the screens in the bath tub. The paints are water-based and rinse off pretty easily, but it’s annoying having to wash off any spatters. So I’ve been looking for a big washing tub with an outlet that I could place directly over the outlet in the bath tub. And I’ve been … Continue reading Couture: Washing

Couture: Bumpy

(July 26, 2014)

I wanted to screen-print onto the sleeves of a shirt. It turns out that’s not trivial: When the fabric is bumpy (the seam down there), the screen doesn’t make contact properly with the fabric, which makes the print crappy. So I need something soft-ish under the shirt to ensure proper contact with the screen. Something … Continue reading Couture: Bumpy

Couture: Upholstery

(July 26, 2014)

After printing, you can either reclaim the “silk” (i.e. monofilament nylon) by washing and scrubbing a lot, or you can just pop the silk off and staple a new silk onto the frame. I prefer the latter, because then I can save the silk for imaginary future use. Yeah, like I’m ever going to reprint … Continue reading Couture: Upholstery

Couture: Mass

(July 25, 2014)

Today’s experiment was to wash the emulsion off the screen with cold water, but with higher pressure. (But putting my thumb over the hose. Hi-tech.) It worked very well. I got no wash-off of the exposed areas, which has been a problem before, when I used luke-warm water. The only problem is that water was … Continue reading Couture: Mass

Couture: Colourful

(July 23, 2014)

I’m still not doing registered multi-prints, because that’s like hard and stuff, but there are other ways to do colour. Like: OK, that’s cheating. But how about this? Of course, the problem with just squishing lots of colours down on the screen and squeegeeing is that you can’t do two strokes, so the colours get … Continue reading Couture: Colourful

Couture: Fans

(July 22, 2014)

For each screen, I’m trying to vary things to see whether I can get the turnover time down. I’m kinda impatient. This time, I put a fan into the “dark room” toilet where I’m drying the emulsion. The screens have to be dried horizontally to avoid the emulsion running, so I lifted it up a … Continue reading Couture: Fans

Couture: White

(July 21, 2014)

I’ve only printed onto black shirts so far. And now I’m out, so I’m doing a white shirt. I’m using a new can of emulsion, and that clears up all the problems I was having with peeling. The main difference between printing on lighter fabrics (as opposed to black fabrics) is that you have to … Continue reading Couture: White

Couture: Yolö

(July 20, 2014)

Even though the screen printing is going swimmingly, I thought it might be fun to try a transfer thingie again. But this time in A3 instead of A4. I googled a bit, and a store strangely called yolö seemed like a likely supplier. So I got a 25-pack of transfers, and printed out an image. … Continue reading Couture: Yolö

Couture: Colours

(July 19, 2014)

I don’t really have the set-up to do multi-coloured prints where things are in perfect register. But I thought that since this screen had clearly separated areas, then I could just mask stuff off, and print each thing separately (or “separately”) with different inks. The colours in the logo aren’t printed perfectly, because of the … Continue reading Couture: Colours

Couture: Expired

(July 19, 2014)

I’ve been having serious problems getting the emulsion to expose properly the last couple of days. I’ve had four screens ruined — peeling and stuff. I tried varying the drying period, the exposure length, and the heat of the water I use to wash the emulsion off with. Then I remembered the emulsion can saying … Continue reading Couture: Expired

Couture: Curing

(July 17, 2014)

I must be doing something wrong when curing (i.e. heat fixing). Most of the shirts survive washing just fine, but two of them have dissolved. Hm… it was the metallic and the “glow yellow”. Perhaps they need more curing? Googling a bit more seems to suggest that curing water based inks with an iron is … Continue reading Couture: Curing

Couture: Errata

(July 16, 2014)

I remembered that I had a drying cabinet, so I plugged the holes in it (to avoid light leaking in), and suddenly my screen printing process is down to five hours. Man, that’s some good screen printing. The image is Errata Stigmata by Beto Hernandez, from that calendar previously discussed in previous editions of this … Continue reading Couture: Errata

Couture: Glow

(July 15, 2014)

Funnily enough, all the ink boxes have the same printed instructions no matter what kind of ink is in the box. And I have two kinds of ink: Regular and “SuperCover”. And the latter apparently works better with a coarser silk (i.e., lower monofilament nylon thread count). This one is printed with the same thread … Continue reading Couture: Glow

Couture: Registering

(July 15, 2014)

I thought I’d experiment with printing two colours on top of each other, so I did the most technically difficult thing: Print a white under coat, and then a silver top coat, with the same silk. And a pretty big print. I printed the white yesterday, and then the silver today. It turns out that … Continue reading Couture: Registering

Couture: Wrestling

(July 14, 2014)

I vividly remembered there being lots of great imagery in the Love and Rockets calendars from the late 80s. After just a few hours of looking through boxes, I finally found the 1990 calendar, which features this beauty: By Jamie Hernandez, and I think that’s probably Rene Titañon. (I’ve been meaning to re-read all of … Continue reading Couture: Wrestling

Couture: Silk

(July 12, 2014)

Today I’m going to attempt a real screen printing. I’ve selected an image from Daltokyo by Gary Panter — the first drawring from the first strip. I’m printing on a black shirt, and the drawing is with black lines on a white background. So I can’t really print the lines themselves, but I have to … Continue reading Couture: Silk

Couture: Squeegee Success

(July 7, 2014)

I finally got the correct squeegee for screenprinting onto fabric: It has rounded edges instead of the square ones used when printing onto paper. So I made yet another attempt with the screen I made weeks ago. Success!!! It takes a few attempts to get comfortable with the squeegee, but I did a few trial … Continue reading Couture: Squeegee Success

Couture: Plastics

(June 27, 2014)

I’m still still still waiting for the right squeegee (the squeegee shop owners apparently went to France for the summer) for doing screen printing, but I got a shipment of t-shirt blanks. So I had to make something. I bought a different make of iron-on transfers — this time for black shirts. Sigel Foil T-Shirt … Continue reading Couture: Plastics

Couture: Transparent

(June 12, 2014)

While waiting for the screen printing equipment to arrive, I’ve been experimenting a bit more with Inkodye. Because of reasons. Here’s an extreme close-up of a shirt exposed with a “normal” over-head projector (OHP) transparency: The white area with pebbled red spots is supposed to be totally white, but because the OHP transparency is so … Continue reading Couture: Transparent

Couture: Inkodye Too

(June 8, 2014)

I couldn’t make sense of my problems with screen printing the shirts. Either too much ink or way too little ink. So I watched a couple of youtube howtos. I’ve been using the wrong type of squeegee! There’s one with hard-ish edges for printing onto paper, and there’s one with rounded edges for printing onto … Continue reading Couture: Inkodye Too

Couture: Ink Twice

(June 7, 2014)

For my second attempt, I tried using less ink, but that made it necessary to squeegee over the silk several times before I pressed it onto the fabric to give it a last squeeg. And that obviously pushed too much ink through the screen, so things filled in too much. So: More ink, and just … Continue reading Couture: Ink Twice

Couture: Dye Once

(June 7, 2014)

Even though the screen wasn’t exposed well, I thought I could make an attempt to print something, just to see how that goes. I put a backing board into the shirt to have firm to print onto. And then I put the shirt onto a frame to raise it from the floor, because I’m printing … Continue reading Couture: Dye Once

Couture: Exposure

(June 7, 2014)

Despite not having the proper light, I’m attempting to do some screen printing. I have to practice, right? So dissolve the sensitiser and pour it into the emulsion. It turns green! Squeegee the emulsion onto the staple side of the screen in a dark-ish room, and let it dry for three hours in a very … Continue reading Couture: Exposure

Couture: Ironing

(June 6, 2014)

While waiting for the screen to dry, I remembered that I had bought some iron-on transfers when I bought the printer, so I printed out a Gary Panter image on one of them. I had bought transfers for white fabric (instead of black fabric) by accident, so I got out an old white t-shirt. Peeel. … Continue reading Couture: Ironing

Couture: Supplies

(June 6, 2014)

I went to an art supplies store and got screen printing supplies. Very nice shop. The thing I’m missing now is 1) better transparencies and or a better printer and 2) a light source to do the exposure of the photo emulsion. I’ve ordered some “digital negative” transparencies from the interwebs, so I’ll have to … Continue reading Couture: Supplies

Couture: Walt

(June 6, 2014)

TO BE CONTINUED

Couture: 7110

(June 5, 2014)

I’ve been meaning to get started with screen printing t-shirts. Because of reasons. I have done some experiments with Inkodye, but that didn’t seem all that exciting. But in any case, you need a printer to print out transparent negatives (for Inkodye) or positives (for screen printing). So I got an HP Officejet 7110, because … Continue reading Couture: 7110

My New Fashion Designer Blog

(November 10, 2013)

I like making t-shirts (i.e., having professionals screenprint them), but it would be fun making some one-offs, too. And learning how to do screen printing is kinda a project. Then somebody linked to Inkodye, and it seemed almost perfect. The process is simple: You apply the ink to the t-shirt and mask off the bits … Continue reading My New Fashion Designer Blog