Hey Guys
I’m looking at how Warhol did his screen printing, particularly his Marilyn prints.
I’m interested in the texture of the skin here:
What is the origin of this texture? Is it just the canvas showing through, or is something else at play? Something to do with the screen printing process perhaps?
Any thoughts are very much appreciated. I am very new to “real” art, lol.
It seems to be a combination of the canvas texture and the underpainting being made with a large rough square bristle brush, which gives these characteristic parallel lines in the paint texture.
Thanks so much!
Most of Warhol’s images, even on canvas, were silkscreened. He used an early process of photo emulsion silk screen, which was very course. Just like other commercial processes, the main way to create “tones” was to put an image through the half toning process. This would result in the dots you see in magazines and newspapers. You can easily see where he did this. Where he did not do this, the images would have a higher contrast, but no dots, more like a high-contrast litho. Which still retained a bit of intermediate transition tonality. This SEEMS to be the case in your sample image. But it’s hard for me to tell as your sample is so limited in what it is showing. From memory, he mostly would use a halftone, especially a bit later in his career.