My First Gocco

This evening after work, I took the Intro Gocco Class at the IPRC - taught by the marvelous Gretchin of Scarlet Star Studios! A Gocco is a Japanese home silk screening tool that allows you to make small (4"x6") prints of any line or high-contrast artwork you can photocopy. Of course, now that I'm hooked, the rumor is that Gocco is no longer being distributed in the U.S. *sigh* I've had one sitting in the garage, and as a former silkscreener, it's been on my "I really want to learn to do this" list. Tonight, I decided to start my Gocco print adventure by drawing little bat images, using the bat finger puppet that was in my Christmas stocking as a model:


(The little "flash, squish" in the upper corner of the drawing were my notes on cool words that Gretchin used while describing the Gocco printing process - "flashing" to burn the screen, and "squishing" to ink and print the screen. Now, of course, I want to make shirts that say: "scribble, flash, squish - Gocco!")

And here is my first print - the drawing moved on the bed when I flashed the screen, so half his little wing got cut off - but other than that, I'm pretty happy with the detail! And, you can print on fabric. I'm thinking it would be a lot of fun to combine this with the foam prints - the delicate detail on top of the rich texture would be really lovely . . .

And there's an advanced Gocco class coming up at the IPRC on January 26th - taught by Shu-Ju Wang, your go-to Gocco gal. I won't be able to make this one, but I'm on it for next time! If you don't live in Portland and you're curious about the Gocco (pronounced "go co," rhymes with "loco") here's a great - if old - blog entry on it at getcrafty.com from Nancy Flynn.