The bear and the bees.

I’d drawn the bear a couple of years ago for an induction when I almost joined The London Print Studio on Harrow road and then lost my confidence and didn’t take it with me for fear of someone telling me it was rubbish. 

It popped up in a folder in amongst my moving boxes a few days before I was due to start at the print studio and with no other artwork ready to go apart from a winged cow it seemed like a good idea.

On the brink of falling asleep on my third night in the flat I had the genius idea of bees! 

I thought this was entirely of my own making until I got on the tube the next day and realised that the jubilee line, that had just become my main transport route was covered in Save the Bees posters. Advertising wins again.

   
With no time to be picky I set about furiously drawing bees. I tried to get away with the three blob classic but my brother was having none of it. Apparently not being five means I have to draw real bees.

 

 Winged cow. Saw it on a bible in Italy, Pisa. Will return to it at some point. Trying to resist a pimp your cow print.

 Batch drawing the bees.

Mega killer bees the size of Bear's face. Bear outline - Trying to remember best way to layer colours in screen printing. On the evening class I did five years ago I hand coloured in all my layers with ink and tracing paper, this time Photoshop won.  





Going mad drawing bees at midnight. At some point, two pages in I realised I had enough and that at the size I was printing it, people probably weren't going to be very concerned with the uniqueness of the invidual bees.

Bear print outs. What's the story?? Who's the victim here? The tiny bees having their honey stolen or the tiny bear about to be swarmed by mutant mega bees? Tricky.

I went for the wee bees. 
 

At this point I went into the print studio and felt embarrassed. 

I didn't take any photo's of my extradordinary first layer of the bears nose. You've missed out on an excellent blob on a white page but here's the second brown layer. 

Also that foot shouldn't be that dark, that's amateur print making for you - I'm going with unique marks of the hand made print but it's actually just paint building up in the screen where I didn't finish pulling through properly. (I think)

I made a lot of layer two bears. 

Bear on scrap paper.

Watery paint marks on card I covered the other layer image on my screen with. 

Layer three - Bee yellow. 

At this point my brother stepped in again and said that I could not print lazy word-processed text under the bear just because I have the handwriting of a four year old. I'd already messed up exposing the final black layer with the text in it anyway, as I didn't apply enough pressure when I coated my screen with emulsion meaning it went on too thick. I figured out something was wrong when I tried to wash it out after exposing my image and it disintegrated under the hose. Another tick in the little book of cock ups. Although afterwards I did get shown a trick of holding up the coated screen up to the (red) light to see if it's all smooth and regular and the light comes through, which was handy.

Anyway brother's girlfriend was drafted in and the bear got some fancy handwriting.

 Final layer exposed on screen with new text. 

 Test print for final black layer. 

I had a nightmare registering the final layer to get the black to fit the bear and the bees. Eventually resorted to acetate and did each one individually. 

 Final bear print on the drying rack.

 Final bear print.