Hello Autumn!

A few weeks ago we all began to notice Autumn creeping its way back into our annual pattern so discreetly yet so flamboyantly, and what a way to start it off on the Falkland Estate screen printing with friends.

Woodland at Falkland Estate

Falkland Estate is located in Fife just across the bridge from Dundee its a lovely wee drive through a bundle of little pretty settlements and a must-have coffee and cake from the organic farm shop and cafe, Pillars of Hercules. The people making all these projects, activities and opportunities possible is The Centre For Stewardship who include charities and enterprises to keep the estate running and well loved, the programme working in partnership of this particular event was Woodworks.

As soon as we arrived it was instantly inviting, looking around we were gathered in old restored horse stables bursting with character and many identifiable features, friendly participants blethering away to each other, a log burning stove as well as free tea and coffee with a slice of home made flapjack (mmm!)

We foraged for about half an hour forty five minutes we were back inside and ready to start making various coloured pigments from the objects we had collected such as leaves, bark, soil, mushrooms, flowers and anything else of that sort.

  

So many Autumn colours, but how will the pigment turn out….?

Grinding up flowers in the mortar and pestle

What we discovered through grinding up our woodland objects is that they did not all give out the same colour as what they appeared in whole form. Someone in the group had picked a fiery red flower which when mushed up in the mortar and pestle became a vibrant green and the little pinky colours flowers you see in the picture above also turned into a green based shade – literally crushing the life outta’ them!

You get a good idea from this picture here of how the pigments change from the original colour – some drastic, some similar – The colours sure match up to the Autumn theme dont’cha think!?

Now time to start screen printing, yaassss!

So, looking back through the photos I took during the day I’ve realised I was so into it I haven’t go many photos from the actual process so I’ll keep it short and sweet with a wee description.

 

We were asked to draw a design of choice inspired by out surroundings, I chose a mushroom because they are my fave. Anyone who has done screen printing before will know the next stage of taping your design down onto the screen and blocking out any left over space so that the pigment doesn’t print out-with the design.

The mushy pigment was then applied in a big line across the top of the screen and dragged down with a squeegee to first flood the screen. Then lay the screen down apply some weight and run the pigment with the squeegee back over your print.

We hung them in the stable cubicles to dry off

These are a couple of my finished prints when drying; the print on the left hand-side has used pigments from blueberries and mushrooms, the one on the left was printed with a lilac flower and bark from a tree.

Voilà!