The Science Of Textile's - The process of doing my final major project tracing.

To start my tracing I used masking tape to tape my paper tracing down onto a large wooden board so it would not move anywhere, This is fundamental when doing a tracing - to keep it still as possible- As you will be layering tracing paper up over the top of it and you don't want something to move and everything to go out of place.

Next I carefully used 'Magic tape' to tape 3 pieces of A3 high quality tracing paper together - One slightly cut down to make it fit on the wooden board - and taped that using masking tape to the wooden board making sure to get the tracing paper as flat to my paper as I can. 

Now I am ready to do my tracing - The first screen I did was the pink screen so I coloured in everything that would be pink. I did this by using these pens...

These pen's are specialist pens which let no light in so when exposing a screen this is the perfect pen to have coloured in your tracing's with.  After a few hours I got my pink screen finished and by this time it was finishing time on a Friday afternoon - as my tracings are on a big board I was not able to take it home therefore I had finished for the weekend which I was so glad as doing my pink screen really made my eyes go funny with all the patterns. As I wanted to incorporate purple into my screen's but did not want to use 5 large screens. With the help of the instructor we decided to only use 4 screens but 5 colours, This means everything that would be purple would be on both my pink screen and my purple screen so when printed I would have purple. This is what my tracing looked like after I had completed my first layer (Pink and Purple).

After doing this layer and having a long bank holiday weekend off, Today I came in on my day off to finish my tracings, The first thing was to start my blue screen, I had already sorted out the tracing paper and masking taped it down on the wooden board the Friday before. I started colouring in everything that was going to be blue and purple but did it a bit differently this time - Instead of working my way up my tracing I decided as I had a little help from my friend with the colouring in I would do all the planets first then all the cells and then the dot's as I am doing a few dots on every screen so all my dots will be different colours. Here is a picture of the tracing during colouring in the blue and purple parts...

After I had completed my blue and purple tracing I next needed to do the dark green layer , I got my tracing paper taped down and started going around the outlines and the circles inside with 

the specialist pen when I had finished this layer it looked like this...

  

By this time I was so excited to get my tracing finished the only screen left to do was the light green which would be under the dark green but as the tracing paper is quite thick and after 3 layers on the top of my paper tracing the pencil lines were hard to see so I did the dark green layer first so I could see where I needed to colour for my lighter green screen and this is what it looked like after I had completed it...

Now I have completed the tracing!! I was so so relived at this point as I am so excited to get on with some samples. During doing my tracing I had no problems as I took my time and had regular breaks as it can get very stressful, When doing my actual paper tracing the only problem I had was finding it difficult to incorporate all the colours I liked on my development sheet but I soon figured it out and got on with things with a little help. Sometimes I think you just need to take a step back and a break and come back to things as you can get blind sighted from looking too hard.

If your doing a paper tracing here are a few tip's I would definitely recommend doing; firstly make sure on every layer of tracing you do you write top on the top of it and draw crosses in the corners of each tracing so it can be lined up properly when its being exposed. Also take breaks regularly but only after you have worked really hard on it. I would also stress to remember it will all come together in the end if you work hard at it, remember a tracing is only a tracing and will be difficult to get an image in your head of what it will look like when it is printed untill it is actually printed. The last thing - STAY POSITIVE!

Thankyou for reading.

Development Sheets And How I Did My Original Tracing - Moo Designs Project

Deevelopment Sheet

Taking inspiration from my visual sheets to create my development sheet. I used only black, white and pink (Monochrome and one contrasting colour). I used my favorite shapes and patterns from my visual sheets to produce my development sheet. To create this sheet i used, gouache black and pink paint (adding white acrylic to the pink to make it a little lighter). I also used black fine liner's in various sizes.

The picture quality is a little off and a bit shiny and the fashion illustration with the dyed fabric behind is just for show as this is currently in my portfolio for university interviews.

As you can see my development sheet is clearly inspired by invertebrate sea creatures and under the sea. I have stuck to the correct colour scheme and I have tried to use different thickness lines and different line techniques such as dashes and dots to create depth and to keep it interesting. From this sheet I created my original repeat print.

This is the original repeat pattern I have created to be traced onto Kodatrace and then exposed onto a screen ready to be screen printed. To create this vertical repeat pattern size A2, I started off with an A2 sized cartridge paper and started to draw my pattern, taking inspiration from my development sheet. I started drawing my pattern in the middle of the page, extending it to the top of the page, and the bottom of the page, so i can find a continuous line which leads me from the bottom of my page to the top of my page. After finding that line, I got a fine liner and drew the line so it was more visual to me, I then cut carefully down that line, making sure the black fine liner is left to one side of the cut, so you want to be cutting at the very side of the line. Some people like to do this with scissors but I like to use a scalpel and a cutting mat for a more precise cut. Then you take the side you have just cut off and very carefully masking tape it to the other side of the paper so when you print it repeats (like the photo above). As my samples only have to be A3 size I have done my pattern A2 and repeated it vertically as you wont be able to see the the pattern repeated horizontally if I did repeat it that way. After you have done all this you can finish doing your pattern. 

The next stage after doing your pattern on the paper is to do it on Kodatrace which is a high quality tracing paper which is used to expose screens. As for my pattern I wanted to do two screens I had to do two tracings, one for each screen. The first screen is for the outline, which will be black, The second tracing will just consist of colouring where the shells will be and the middles of the big circles as these will be pink.

What went well? As for my last project I did a 360 repeat print which was harder to create my original tracing , as for this project I have only created a horizontal repeat pattern it has gone a lot better. 

What did not go so well? When photocopying my tracing to make it darker so it exposes better onto my screen the photocopier made my photocopy have lots of dark bits on it, which I was not impressed with. To fix this, I used the photocopier in the staff room at college.

The next post will be about my time in the print room as I will be creating my samples.

Thanks for reading...