Blue Pansy Butterfly screen print
One more color to print, which is going to be yellow and red eye spots on the wings. These have turned out really well, I can’t wait to start cutting them out. All the metallic and reflective inks throw the light in different ways depending on the angle, so having a bunch of them with all the wings tilted in different directions will show off all the effects nicely.
All that metallic and semi gloss ink does funny things when layered over and over.
I started printing the blue on the butterflies yesterday, but I was a little too tired from working late and getting up early to print the whole run. Things like this I like to do when I am fresh, especially since the blue is so important to the overall look of the print. I’m hoping to get all these prints finished today so I can start cutting them out and getting my piece together for the Faultline Grand Opening May 12th.
2 butterfly stencils printed on abstract background
2 (or more) colors to go!
I’ve been working in a new way with the butterflies, and it has been way more fun than the previous way of spending days at the computer. This print is almost entirely hand drawn, I just used the computer to assign the colors to specific areas in of the butterfly. Some of the colors of the butterfly overlap by less than 1/100 of an inch, so a computer still comes in handy.
Ink Drawing on Vellum
The above drawing is ink on vellum, I made 2 of these for the background to the butterflies and overlapped the images several times with varying colors so all the prints are quite different. Then when I screen print the butterflies on top, all 3300 butterflies will be at least slightly different. Usually the challenge with printmaking is making all the prints the same, so making them all different is a whole new problem, especially in quantity.
First layers of butterfly screen prints
One thing that is interesting to me is the colors shift according to the angle of the light, and colors printed on top of other colors have more surface sheen, you can tell there is another layer underneath, even if the top color is opaque. I’ve always been fascinated by this phenomenon, and the butterflies work really well at showing this off since I’m going to cut out each butterfly and tilt the wings at different angles to catch the light.
butterfly under printing detail
I had a little studio visit from this beautiful Red Admiral (Vanessa atlanta) butterfly. I snapped a few pictures until it started to freak out and I put it outside. It was a nice little omen if you will, since I am in the middle of a big rush to get all my new butterflies ready for the show at Faultline May 10 & 12. The studio is an industrial area, so it was little surprising, but we are close to sloughs and there must be some nettle out their nearby. I might plant some nettles in my backyard, since this is what the caterpillars eat.
Strange to see a photo of a butterfly in an urban setting, isn't it?
This is what my palette looks like these days
I’ve had a nice little break from my big butterfly collage but I’m ready to get back to it. I just finished a big oil painting commission so now I can move on, or back, rather. Currently this piece is about 1350 butterflies, printed by hand and cut out with scissors. Some of the butterflies are 11 colors, and all are at least 3, which is the yellow and black one, and actually I printed 2 layers of white and then two layers of yellow to get the color to pop, in addition to the 2 other colors.
Screen printed butterflies on paper
I’m going to finish this one for Faultline‘s Grand Opening Saturday May 12. It feels pretty awesome to being so close to finishing it, I’ve been working on it for close to 8 years and I’d like to start the next one, which will be 20,000 butterflies. I’ll be giving myself 2 years to finish that one. It’s going to be quite large, 12 x 17 feet or so.
