Photograms

I wanted to try making a photogram because I saw there could be two meanings to what you made, what you used and what you made it look like, and that intrigued me. For this project I decided to use some souvenirs I got on my trip to Hawaii this past summer, namely a lei, a conch shell, and turtle necklace. 

First, I just put all the materials on a test strip in no particular order and tried exposing them to various levels of light. I found out that with longer exposures you get more detail in the picture, showing the metaliciness of the necklace, the fabric texture of the lei, and the different layers of shell on the shell.

Test Strip #1- 20 second exposure

Since I then knew how the materials reacted to the light, I began thinking about what kind of design I could arrange them in. I wanted to do something that would emphasize the beachy origins of the materials. Finally, I decided on a beach scene with the shell as a sunset, the lei as some seaweed at the bottom of the ocean, and the turtle as if he was swimming through the scene.

So to do this, I first put the shell on the photo paper and covered the rest with the book. I exposed this for 15 seconds so that there would be a slight difference between the body of the shell and the spines, but not much. Then I took the shell off the paper and put the necklace and lei on. I covered the area where the shell had been with the book and exposed the rest for 20 seconds, to get more detail. I discovered that if I left the chain of the necklace to trail behind the turtle it looked a little like a slip stream of water trailing behind the turtle and the the clasp in front of the turtle looks like a fish it is chasing. I also discovered while experimenting that when water gets on the paper it leaves a little bubble mark. Since I was doing an underwater scene I decided to drip some water onto the paper on purpose to look like little bubbles.

Final Copy- 15 seconds for shell (sunset), 20 seconds for turtle necklace and lei ( swimming turtle and sea plants)

I feel that this project has been pretty successful. I really like the end product and I think it is adorable. I feel that I was relatively innovative in this project, with my idea and my water bubbles and even my double exposing, and the product came out looking good. I thoroughly enjoyed this project!

Silk Screen Printing Assignment

For this assignment we had to take a picture we had taken and put it on a t-shirt with a silk screen. I chose to use this photo because it was quite plain and simple, but still visually interesting and I could think of a good slogan I could put with it.

As you can see, this is not really a very ornate photo. But with a little photo-shopping, I can turn it into a cool pro-reading shirt.

First I took the screen and stretched it across a wooden frame. Then I painted it with a light-sensitive emulsion and put it in the dark room for a day to let it set. Then I photo-shopped the photo so that I had three different pictures; one with a white background and an all-black book, one with an all-white book and a black background, and one with everything white except the text and the line in the center of the book where the spine was. I also added the slogan "Shhhhhh... I'm Reading" in a spot where the text didn't show up. Then I asked Ms. Zanini to put these photographs on see-through sheets of plastic. When I had the sheets, I put them on the light table with the screen on top of them and turned the light table on. After 10 minutes I took it off the light table and scrubbed at the screen so the emulsion came off of the areas where the light didn't touch, or where there was black on the plastic sheets. After that I just mixed up the colours I wanted on my shirt, and used a squeegee to push them through my screen onto my shirt! I even added some little dots of blue colour because I thought they would look cute and they covered up one little smudge of blue paint on my shirt.The end product looked like this.

I like they way the end product turned out because I think it is visually interesting and came out the way I wanted it to. I also like they way this turned out because what you wear on your shirt can represent you, and I managed to come up with a picture and slogan that does just that. When people look at what you are wearing, they usually make a snap judgement on your personality based on your clothes, whether they want to or not. This shirt can tell everyone I love to read, correctly portraying my personality.I feel like I did a good job on this project.