Screen Print

Screen Prints

Screen printing is a print technique which uses a image stencil on a mesh like material. Any kind of image can be made into a screen print stencil by simplifying the image or changing it digitally. The stencil that is put onto the mesh is made of a photo sensitive emulsion that blocks the paint from going throughOnce the screen is ready with the image you can push paint through it onto paper, a t-shirt or anything that is flat and will hold paint. 

This is a screen print that i have found on the internet. This screen print has been done using an effect called Dot Screen. I couldn't find the name of the artist or a suitable reference for the picture but i thought it was appropriate for what we are doing in the workshop for screen prints.

Making a Screen print

We started off our lesson by choosing a large photograph of a designer or artist that we appreciate. The image has to be large as we are printing them in A3. We got rid of the background by using the polygonal lasso tool. This is the image i chose of Graphic Designer, David Carson. I chose i black and white image as we were told we would be turning it to grayscale anyway.

We got rid of the background by using the polygonal lasso tool on Photoshop. This is so we can edit the image so the filters work with screen printing. We were told that we would be using the filter effect Dot Screen. This works for a screen print as it breaks the image into dots instead of one large shape. It also creates a nice effect 

Here i have used the filter Pixelate, i then chose color halftone and changed the width which increased the amount of dots in the picture. I wanted more dots so that the image was still recognizable as David Carson. We then printed the image in A3 so that we could start the next stage of the screen print process which is exposing the image to a screen which was done for us by Celina.

Here we have our screen that has been exposed using the photo sensitive emulsion. It is attached to a wooden frame which keeps the screen in place whilst printing. To prepare the screen we held it up to the light to check for any unwanted areas not blocked by the emulsion. We then used masking tape to block these areas out. We also stuck down pieces of cardboard on each corner, this is so the screen isn't in complete contact with the paper and so when you press down on it the paint kisses the paper. This is called a snap which avoids the paint bleeding.

For the ink we mixed 60% acrylic medium with 40% acrylic coloured paint. I chose a bright magenta. We also used a small amount of Screen retarder. This is to help the paint not stick to the screen permanently. We mixed the solution together in a plastic cup using a spoon.

We placed some A3 paper down onto the printing area and taped it down to avoid it moving around whilst printing. We then put the paint/ink onto the board on top of the paper making sure to line the stencil up with the paper.

This is my first print using the one color magenta. I used the squeegee at a 45 degree angle to push the paint through. I repeated this which is why i think there is too much ink on this print although some of it works and you can pick out David Carsons face quite well.

Here i have got a bit more experimental with colors and decided to add a muddy green to the magenta. As i have screen printed before and experimented with colors on the board i thought it would be interesting to see what would work with this screen.

This is the squeegee that is used to push the ink through the screen. As you can see i used a variety of colors with this screen. I like the effect of the different colors mixing into one and other across the screen and on the prints.

This is the spoon i used to place the ink on the screen print board. You can see the colors on the spoon is a similar to effect to the prints.

This is the result of mixing the inks on the screen. I think that it works effectively with this screen design and i like the line of thick ink down the right hand side of the print.

This is my favorite print from this workshop. We have been asked to pick one to hang up in the School of Art building and this is the one that i chose because i like the colors and the even spread of ink across the print.

This is another one of my favorites from the print exercise. I feel like i have learnt a lot about traditional print techniques and the work that goes into it. In a way you have a lot more control over the colors and the spread of the ink but a lot of it is chance which i like. These two final prints came out of experimentation and a lot of prints. I like that my favorites of the day were down to taking a risk with colors and the amount of ink that i used.