SECOND GRADE . . . The art of silk screening

Today we learned how Andy Warhol created multiple images for his Pop Art prints. He designed only one version of each portrait he made, and then constructed a screen from that image so that he can print it many times. This process is called "silk screening." When you purchase a printed T shirt from a store, chances are the printing was done this way. Each shirt looks exactly the same because they were all printed from the same screen.

Here is a screen that I made with the Ranney School logo. A very fine fabric (similar to silk) was stretched over a wooden frame and then coated with a film to seal off the holes in the fabric. Only the area that shows the Ranney logo is not coated. Fabric paint is then forced through the holes of the screen with a squeegee.

When the screen is lifted up, the shirt displays the printed logo.

Andy Warhol often used many colors with one screen and varied the colors from one print to the next. The images look identical, but the use of color makes them appear as separate works of art. We will use this idea with our marker portraits. We drew only one portrait on paper and these drawings were then copied on a copy machine. Next week we will experiment with color.  By varying the palettes we select for our hair, shirt and background, we will be able to make our own version of a Pop Art portrait.