Composition - Screen Print Preparation

Ideas

Roughs

After writing down some initial ideas I decided to go ahead with the idea of making someone breakfast in bed. I know this isn't a very adventurous idea but I wanted to see what I could do with quite a mundane topic. 

Using the idea of foreground, mid ground and background, I eventually decided on the rough on the bottom right. I like how there man is clearly in the foreground and that you can only see him from the back. I also like the window in the background and how you can see beyond the room which gives a sense of depth. 

I briefly experimented with another concept but working to time constraints, I realised I was overcomplicating my options by introducing new ideas so I went back to developing the rough I had liked previously using two colours to figure out my colour separation. I felt that there went enough thought going into my colour separation so I went back to working with greyscale to ensure I was considering value properly.

I want the man in the foreground to be quite light in tone but the main focus needs to be the woman sleeping. I have made the bed, carpet and detail of the window and furniture a mid tone or dark tone so that the woman stands out because her face and arm will be left white. In some areas I have used stripes very close together to give the impression of a lighter tone of a colour. 

I initially thought that I could use Adobe Illustrator to create my image for screen print because it would give me a really crisp, shape based design. 

I did battle with this for a while but it was taking a very long time as I am not yet completely confident with the software and the outcomes I was producing were not how I had imagined they would be. I moved back to using analogue techniques to draw out the components of my images and then used Photoshop to put my positives together so that it would be easier for me to adjust the levels and make sure the images were in pure black and white. I scanned my individual pieces and played around with the size of the man in the foreground, I made him bigger so that he took up more of the frame and the detail of the breakfast was clearer. I also changed the checked pattern on his shirt  to a hand drawn grid pattern I scanned in. 

I like the texture of the pencil on this so I will try and keep this when editing on Photoshop because it would add some interest to a flat block of colour. 

I composed my image on Photoshop using the opacity levels of the layers to help me line them up correctly. When I thought I had finished, I printed the two sheets and put them on a lightbox to see how they would look. Unfortunately I had forgotten that the man in the foreground was filled in with white on photoshop so I was unable to see that the pink spread across his face and onto the breakfast tray. I went back onto photoshop and deleted these areas so that they would show through as white. I changed the layer setting to multiply so that I could see through any white spaces now.

During this process, it made me think about the absence of colour and using this to make shapes. I removed a few shapes of colour on the bedsheets to give the impression of steam rising from the cup of tea. 

Final Positivies