Screen Printing

Johannes Vermeer, *The Art of Painting,* 1666

Halftone images of Clio, the muse of history, and the subject of *The Art of Painting*

Using Adobe Photoshop, I separated the woman from the painting and created a halftone. This halftone was then printed on thin transparent plastic so that the design could be transferred to a screen. I printed out two versions of her, one the mirror of the other, and transposed them onto the same large screen. From here I mixed several colors of ink with a transparent medium to create the layered effect.

I chose colors that are often used both in standard printing as well as digital color work. When these colors are layered it creates images that are jarring to look at and often have a blurred look caused by the overlapping colors.

In my thesis I studied the possibility that Vermeer used a camera obscura when he created The Art of Painting. If this is true, then it would have allowed the artist to include visual effects caused by viewing his scene through a lens. These visual elements can then be compared to the modern techniques used by visual effects artists. I compared lens effects that could be created in 3D software and how they could be altered using a modeled lens placed in front of the 3D camera. I figured that testing optical illusions through printmaking may be an interesting way to visualize the digital material I was studying for my thesis.