Intentions - Experimenting with print

My first week in the print room I focused on trying to experiment with as many techniques I could to see what would suit my work and what I enjoyed using. I also dyed my own fabrics up using the dye baths, to achieve the colours to match my colour palette. I also experimented with how I want my fabrics dyed and I think I have concluded (at least for now) that I want my fabrics to have a subtle tie-dye effect to them.

For my colour palette, I chose to have a limited choice of colours, focusing mainly on different shades. I chose to do this in order to set a challenge for myself as I normally have a really wide and bright colour scheme.

I started working on sheer fabrics in order to reflect my drawings, which I have done on tracing paper, with the intention of layering up different fabrics. I quickly realised I was not achieving the clean solid samples I was aiming for and so I tested on a few heavier fabrics, such as medium weight cottons. I tested out a few print techniques; for example, creating a gradient print from black to grey, overlapping my motifs in a pattern using a combination of pearl pigment and dark purple reactive dye.

Doing this week of testing was very useful because it helped me to decide what was successful and what was not. I created a list of questions, which I answered for myself as a conclusion of this week.
-Solid backgrounds or tie-dye? – Tie-dye
-Overlapping motifs or not? – Not overlapping
-One or two colours printed on each sample? – One (keep it simple)
-Where do I see my work? – Interiors
I also decided this week that I wanted to rule out blue from my colour palette to refine it more and keep it simple, because for me, having a smaller colour palette is a challenge.