This is an older post from early March 2020 that I’m republishing because I recently used my cotton candy screen, and I want to share how I made it. In the post below I mention that I just got a 355 mesh screen, and that’s what ended up having the best result. I burned that screen right before the stay-at-home order in March 2020, and I still use the screen when I need a cool background texture in a print.

Oh hi. I’m taking things day by day here in the studio. For a few weeks I have been working on testing out an idea, which is trying to burn screens with cotton candy. What that means is that instead of using a transparency that has a drawn or computer-printed image on it (the usual way of burning a screen), I am placing cotton candy on the screen and using that to create the image on the screen.

I had this idea last year — I don’t know where it came from other than being a big cotton candy fan and thinking about different textures and objects I could use to expose screens, in lieu of drawing, which I’ve been feeling less inclined to do lately.

I knew I wanted super fluffy, fresh cotton candy so I did some research and bought a cotton candy machine so I could make my own — the pre-made stuff in the store seems too dense.

Making cotton candy with my cotton candy machine

I started with what seemed like the darkest color/favor, which was purple/grape, but it didn’t really leave a mark on the screen. So I went right into black — got some black sugar from my old pal Heinrich’s and spun some gross-looking, grey cotton candy, and have been able to successfully expose a number of screens with that.

Black cotton candy made with black sugar

So far I have been using 305 mesh screens to retain as much detail as possible, but I just got a 355 for +10 print nerd points and will test that next. My exposure time is about 3 and a half minutes with Ulano LX660, which is less than half the time I usually expose screens (8 and a half to 10 minutes). I use a set of work lights from Home Depot, which is why my exposure times are on the longer side.

I still have some testing to do, but I was happy to get any image on the screen as a starting point. I hope to continue working on this project again soon.