After seeing Tom Doggs work I was immediately inspired to try something quite similar with the colour smudge marble effect now i have got a simple block shape design to work with. So my next step was to create a positive for screenprinting, I had originally tried doing this on paper using pens so my positive would have no digital process. half way through doing this I thought that there could be a better way of creating the positive that will be much cleaner and will be more like a logo design.
So I decided to scan in my drawn version of the lino printed astronaut and turn it into a vector. I have only ever used illustrator once before so I thought now was a good time to try and refresh my memory on the basics, plus with the design being a vector I could stretch or shrink the design to how ever big I want which could come in handy if this deign will be printed onto a t-shirt. With the design being printed onto a t-shirt it needs to look as professional as possible so a vector may be the best way to achieve this.
This is the final vectored version of my original lino printed astronaut design. I think it was definitely a good idea to convert it to vectors rather than trying to draw out the design by hand. This digital version will make a much fresher looking printed design.
This is how the colour smudge effect is achieved, The most important part is flooding the screen. The flood has to be done correctly with the right colour contrast because the flood of the screen is what is pressed onto the paper. It took me a few trys to realise this but I think with some of the results I had gotten the hang of it by the end. This effect really creates a nice texture that cant be achieved with any other process and I will definitely continue to develop this process in my practice.
My first test for the colour smudge had to be pink and blue. I am really pleased with the effect that has been created on these screenprints, I think the colour smudge is a lot more effective than the lino printed colour fade. The lines and shapes look a lot sharper and the colour effect is more random and unique. After seeing these printed astronauts my next thought is to see how they would look on some sort of product like a t-shirt, although I do this this specific colour effect on the astronaut quite looks like it could be in a children's story book.
Ive tried out another two colour combination with this design and although I said that I wont be using black I still really like this colour combination. I think it is the contrast between the vibrant neon pink against the solid black that makes this effective. I think for a t-shirt design this colour combination could work better than the pink and blue but for just the purpose of a screenprint the pink and blue is better.
Another colour test of orange and blue colour smudge. I like the combination but they defiantly do not look as appealing as the pink and black or pink and blue so I wont take these colours any further.
This colour combination in my opinion really doesn't work well at all, I think for this smudge effect to work well the colours need to be really bright and vibrant such as neon, or if both colours arnt vibrant there needs to be a high contrast between. This green and purple is simply too dark and the smudge looks a bit swampy. The bright colours will be how I can get the best out of this design because my next step for this is to see how it looks as a logo on a t-shirt.
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