ColourCraft: Warhol Inspired Cat Prints

Saturday 17 August 2019

Warhol Inspired Cat Prints

One of my favorite artists- certainly in the PopArt genre, is Andy Warhol! He played around a lot with icons both human and not, Marilyn Monroe and Campbell's Soup being examples- using printing techniques and exploring with color!
This month I've done my own version, using my lovely cat Leia as a model.

First I printed out a black and white photo of her in the size that I wanted to make my prints. Since she is a black and white cat, it makes it even easier for this technique. I then used a light board to trace around the main areas of color I wanted to separate out.

Then I used a clear plastic with a sticky back (freezer paper would also worked) and traced and cut out my stencils- the black parts, the white parts and her eyes and nose. I stuck these onto blank screens. I used three, but you can also use one and just switch out the stencil after you've printed one. I made sure to have an inch of uncut plastic around my image.

I then marked a registration mark on my fabric in pencil- where I will place the lower left hand corner of the plastic stencil when I'm printing.

I then laid the screen into place, mixed up some Eco Acrylic Paint with fabric medium and pulled it through my screen. I blended various colors because I didn't want to use super pure shades.

I mixed different colors and printed all the "white" portions of Leia. Let those dry and then printed the "black" portions (using the registration mark as a guide as to where to place the next screen), and finally doing the "eyes and nose".

The result looked like this:

Pretty cool! I like how they aren't perfect- but I wanted to add more detail to bring her to life. I used paint pens, but it also could have been fun to put these on some wadding and backing and quilt the details!