Silkscreen Printing

Last night I felt something that I haven’t felt in a long while. Remember being a kid in 4th grade art class, covered from head to toe in glue/paint/clay/paper/marker and the teacher says, “Okay guys – it’s time to clean up!” – and all of the sudden you rush to make just one more finger painting/ash tray/paper snowflake because you’re loving it all so much you just don’t want to pack it up? Well it was just exactly like that. Last night was the first class of the long awaited  silkscreen printing class that I’m finally taking! I’ve dabbled with it in the past – and come up with some decent results – but thought it was time to really learn about what I’m doing and how to do it properly. We started with a little demo and then got messy with stencil prints, and of course I took a couple of photos.

{note: this next part outlines some of the process we went over last night, mostly so I can remember how to do it in the future.}

Silkscreen Stenciling:
1. First we sketched out a simple design on Freezer Paper (seeing as to how I’ve never used freezer paper before, it’s paper that’s plastic coated on one side – who knew!?), but something like contact paper/shelf liner can also be used. Then used an X-acto to cut out the design.

2. Next we taped the designs to the bottom of the screens (plastic side facing screen – paper side facing table) taping along the top on the paper, and just a little tab on the bottom to hold it on; the stencil sticks to the screen after running the first print. Also a scrap piece of freezer paper is taped (plastic side up) to the top of the screen to cover the unused screen from ink and serve as an ink collection area.

3. From there we chose colors (I chose a bold red) and mixed to perfection with transparent base, which is supposed to help with consistency, volume, and of course make the ink slightly more transparent.

Next, screwed the frame into frame hinges on the table like these:

{note: the screen needs to be lifted ever so slightly off of the table and act like a trampoline – only making contact with the paper where the squeegee is pushing on it. this will help to avoid a “halo” like effect and help to keep the bottom side of the screen ink-free. the little lip of the hinge clamp that the top of the screen rests on accomplishes this.}

4. Place paper under screen, pour ink onto plastic above design, position squeegee, and pull a print!

I probably made about 10 or 15 prints – and most of them were incomplete in some way or another, but one came out well enough to be proud of:

All in all this particular procees seems pretty straight forward. There’s still quite a bit to learn, and I can hardly wait till next Wednesday’s class! The classes are 2.5 hours long, and at 9pm I was dying to make just one more print.