Screen Printing

I decided to use reading week as a chance to finally try some screen printing. Other than the scheduled workshops and a collaborative brief in first year I haven't explored screen printing during this degree. It's a method of printing I really enjoyed in my last college and I regret not doing any sooner, but at the same time the briefs I have worked on haven't seemed to call for it. Over the summer I produced this illustration for a friend, it was a very time consuming project but I enjoyed spending the time image making. I thought that this would be an appropriate piece of work to use for the screen printing.

Due to the fine lines of the drawing it was very difficult to get a good quality print of the image. I also experienced a lot of problems to do with flooding and the screen becoming blocked. When I finally resolved these problems I tested how the image worked on several different stocks, 3 different colours and gradients. I found that tracing paper and newsprint took the image a lot better than stock with more grain such as the cartridge paper. Better prints came from pulling the ink through twice, but none of the prints I have are as detailed as the drawing since the screen itself was not perfect.