Come with us on a journey as I walk you through how we made our newest bandana and also the process for how we make most of the stuff on our site!
One of the things I get asked most often is where we get the ideas for our work. Both Justin and I are huge readers and many of our concepts for pieces come from books. Science writing is of particular interest; but you'd be surprised how many cool things you can learn in the most unlikely of genres.
Being in nature is a pretty unbeatable feeling, and we prioritize multiple weekly hikes whenever the weather allows. Many Fennec works are inspired by things we observed or nature journaled about when exploring, curiosity about the world around you is a great starting point for art!
There's no magic formula for getting inspiration to strike! So it's important to always be prepared. I keep little notebooks in every room of our house and studio with a pen just in case. The only thing worse than having no good ideas, is having a great one only to forget it right after.
If you're looking for advice on artist's form, I am most certainly not your gal. I draw everything for Fennec by hand with the most crustacean of posture. I'm very antsy, so I move between 3-5 different chairs and spots in the room during a single drawing session. I like to listen to podcasts or watch old episodes of TV shows I've seen 1000 time while I work, to keeps my brain just occupied enough that I don't get distracted.
I'm a huge fan of using inexpensive art supplies! Early on when I was learning how to draw I was obsessed with the fancy and pricy supplies that artists I looked up to used. I was convinced that just the right pencil or paper would suddenly make my work better. Turns out, it's mostly practice. And the best way to get all that practice in was to learn to use the kind of materials and tools I didn't need to be precious with. If something doesn't go well, I can just start again. It's just printer paper...how nice is that?
In order for a drawing to be screen printed it needs to be in "spot color". This means that each art file you want to print needs to be solid black without any pencils scuffs or shades of grey. It can take many hours to prep a work of art after scanning to be ready to print, removing noise from a scan takes serious time. If there is more than one color in a print we are making, each color is prepared as a separate layer (so eventually they can each have their own screen and can be print one on top of the other).
We have a special wide format printer for making transparencies, the ink needs to print very dark to work well. The transparency is what we use to transfer our art to a screen...
To prep screens we coat them in a special emulsion that must dry to cure. It's very important that these screens are kept in a dark storage cabinet until it's time to use them. We have a special piece of equipment called an exposure unit which does two things: emit light on a timer and vacuum seal the screen to the table holding it in place. Think of exposing a screen as kind of like developing a photo ... we place the transparency on a coated screen and expose it to light for a set time. Then we blast the screen with water (it's so loud)! The unexposed emulsion rinses away from the screen in the shape of the design (but the rest will remain as a hard coating).
We need different sized screens for different projects and bandanas require some of the largest screens we buy. Screens cost more the larger they are, and can be reclaimed for new projects once we are ready to make a fresh design. We have special shelf storage we built where we store all of our current screens to use again and again.
Everything in our shop is printed BY HAND! Justin uses special squeegees (please forgive the above spelling error, I was sleepy) to pull ink over the screen. It goes through the hole in the screen that is the shape of the design depositing it on the piece below. Printing bandanas is a real work out, and it takes a lot of strength to do them by hand. Justin even had to build an extra large platen (printing platform) just to hold them. Most print shops do their printing with automatic presses which are large printing robots. Printing high detail art by hand is a dying skill and it takes many years to master. But it's important to us because it allows us to use our favorite water based inks which are much softer to touch and better for the planet too!
Properly setting the ink with heat is an important step for any screen print on fabric. Different ink and fabric combinations require different amounts of heat and time for a truly permanent cure. Water based ink is especially permanent once it's properly cured and doesn't fade or crack with wear. No need to handwash it or be precious unless the item itself has special care instructions, it simply won't budge!
We've been teaching ourselves product photography, and boy is it hard! We get better every year but are far from being pros. We are committed to teaching ourselves how to better use our camera this year, it's definitely a steep learning curve. Making flat objects look good on camera is especially tricky, but I hope we can figure it out!
By the time we get to this part of the process, we're usually both a little worn out. I edit the photos, doing my best to make sure the color you see on your monitor is as close as I can get to how it looks in real life. It can be slow frustrating work, but I try to be up for the challenge. When we list the item on our site, I take time to tell the story of the piece and to give a sense of who might enjoy having it in their life. I also measure dimensions and practical stuff that I know our customers will need to know to make a decision on buying. I weigh the piece to make sure the shipping costs charged will be fair and then it's time to go live ...
Phew! We come to the end of our journey and another piece has been added to the site! I may share it to social media or our newsletter, so that people know we've got something new. We always get a little nervous when we put a new artwork out into the world, as you can see ... each piece on this site represents a long journey and many many hours before it's ever seen by anyone outside our studio. You can check out the Eyes for Love Bandana here, but this process is similar to what we use for all the screen printed items in our shop.
I think next time I might share how we make multicolor prints, but I'd love to hear what you'd like to know about too! Feel free to leave a comment or question below, who knows...maybe you'll inspire our next process post!
-Joelle