Friday, 31 October 2025

OCTOBER SUMMARY -- 2025

I spent most of October in the south, for the SOUTHWEST PRINT FIESTA in Silver City, and later in El Paso.  I drew less than usual this month.  However I did manage to make AI animations with the new SORA 2:

TESSELLATION STEAMROLLER PRINTS --
 Southwest Print Fiesta 2025
We made big collaborative steamroller 
tessellation prints

AI in the BORDERLANDIA
Mixing and old AI drawing
with a photo from Juarez, Mexico in Midjourney

UNM and Oaxaca Prints in Albuquerque
The Mothership Alumni has a fantastic print show from Oaxaca
featuring Daniel Hernandez

October 22, 2025
Pilo Pida
painting a mural at the ARTE EN VIDA event
October 25th, at Proper Printshop in El Paso



DRAWINGS

I managed to get to a few drawing sessions, though I was mostly busy with printmaking all month:

Best KRRRL Drawings --October 2025


The latent idea was to echo the DESERT TRIANGLE PRINT CARPETA of ten years ago (2015) by artists from TUCSON, ALBUQUERQUE and EL PASO.  During this SOUTHWEST PRINT FIESTA we combined linocuts from collections of those three desert cities to exhibit and make collaborative EXQUISITE TESSELLATION Prints:

DESERT TRIANGLE PRINT CARPETA
of 2015

Plus I submitted to the Southwest Print Fiesta Print Exchange 2025:

June 16, 2025
Southwest Print Fiesta Print Exchange 2025

I also dropped into OffCenter Arts in Albuquerque to pick up the linocut that Zimmy carved.  She is a great printmaker and runs the printmaking studio at OffCenter Arts:

October 28, 2025
Li Chu (Zimmy) at OffCenter Arts in Albuquerque,
next to her EXQUISITE TESSELLATION Print


LASER CUTTING SILK SCREEN

FUTURE FORGE Makerspace in Silver City was talking about laser cutting images into silk screens with the $400 X-Tools kit.  The problem is that you have to buy their $1000 laser cutter, as well as new screens every time you wanted to burn a new image.  

I made a BLOG POST about this to investigate doing this on our laser cutter at Quelab, with more of a DIY approach.

Laser Cutting an image into Silk Screen for printing
AI imagines 
laser cutting an image into silk screen



AI ART

SORA 2 came out the last day of September, and I got access to it on October 4th.  Soon it was available to everyone for free. So I got to animate in AI with it (SORA 2 adds sound), and compare it to the AI animation from Midjourney:

Animated just with Midjourney (from Public Domain images taken from the Internet Archive):

Talking Portraits and more AI...
Old Portrait Drawings animated in KRRRL's drawing style

Animated with SORA 2 and Midjourney:

Southwest Print Fiesta 2025
Balloon Fiesta to the Southwest Print Fiesta 2025

Animated with SORA 2 and Midjourney with images from Juarez and El Paso:

AI in the BORDERLANDIA
AI in the BORDERLANDIA

Animated just with Midjourney:

Bike Plane on AI

I did get censored by SORA 2 when I asked it to animate one of my abstract drawings. I get this warning "This content may violate our guardrails concerning similarity to third party content":

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Laser Cutting an image into Silk Screen for printing

Can we laser cut an image directly into silk screen, and by pass the exposure unit process?

AI describes my FANTASY
of laser cutting silk screens

Apparently the X-Tool laser cuts through the coating, rather than harden the emulsion:

The xTool Screen Printer - Watch This Before You Buy!

And according to the comments in this Tik Tok video, X-Tool sells precoated METAL screens, that can be used only once.



X-Tools is offering a set-up to do just that -- $400 for a screen printer harness, a screen frame, and apparently one coated screen.

However you also need at least $1000 to buy their laser cutter, and their proprietary "polyester fast-engraved" screen, four for $25.

Screen Printing with a Laser Cutter?
// xTool S1 40 Watt Laser Cutter + Screen Printer Kit


Perhaps we could use a stainless steel screen printing mesh and just coat the screen with emulsion (without "vinyl" or "halogen" in it). Does Amazon sell it?

Perhaps we could just adhere "Blazer Orange".

A UV diode laser might work, like my Laser Pecker 2:

Mesh Source:

Ecotex® Textile Blue Screen Printing Emulsion:

******

UPDATE (November 19, 2025): 

We discussed silk screening with a laser cutter with Doug at Quelab Hack Night, and it might be easier to do than we realized.  The key is using metal mesh for the silk screen, as the CO2 laser or Diode laser will not cut the metal.  Keeping this in mind, the cutting power settings might not be critical.

The laser would cut holes into the emulsion, rather than harden the emulsion. While Adric suggested using housepaint to coat the screen, we should probably start by using regular emulsion, as that goes on thin and we know that it works.

The next issue is reclaiming the screen.  We can probably use the recommended chemicals to clean the screen from the ecotex emulsion, or perhaps Clorox like we used to use in San Francisco.  Adric said that we could just burn the emulsion off, say in the laser cutter or with a blow torch.  Rebecca suggested that we could just coat the screen with emulsion again, covering the holes.

The problem is stretching the metal screen.  However Doug had a method to stretch it taught, so stretching might not defeat us.

Ultimately, if this works and is easy, why aren't other people laser cutting into silk screens to make prints?


I bought a replaceable screen frame on Amazon and some very fine steel mesh. I got the steel mesh into the screen, coated it with emulsion and then set the XTool to zap out the emulsion. 


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AI in the BORDERLANDIA

I use the new AI animation programs -- Midjourney and Sora 2 -- to animate scenes from El Paso/Juarez:

AI in the BORDERLANDIA




Mural in Juarez about immigration

Midjourney
This mural doesn't exist


As seen in Juarez



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Wednesday, 29 October 2025

October 28, 2025

Drawn at Art Buddies in Albuquerque:


KREA



KREA

KREA
Midjourney
EzGif






The next day on October 29, 2025 I dropped in to OffCenter Arts during their open free printmaking Wednesday session, and picked up an EXQUISITE TESSELLATION linocut from Li Chu (Zimmy):



EXQUISITE TESSELLATION linocut by Li Chu (Zimmy)

I also left some Tattoo Inkpads (from Made to Order Stamp and Seal) at OffCenter Arts, which make good temporary tattoos:

Zimmy was stamped by a Tattoo Inkpad


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