Screen Printing Part 1

Wow I am loving the post-exam free time I have at the moment! I am working on so many things! Yesterday I finally got round to putting my screen printing kit in action yey!

* Step 1: Make very simple design to try initial experiments with - very similar to my lino printing card design but that's because I always find designs so hard to come up with. How does everyone do it? What is illustrator all about? Beats me, all I know is there are some fantastic screen print designs out there!

* Step 2: Draw design on with pencil then trace over it with slightly diluted Screen Drawing Fluid using paintbrush before leaving to dry. This is when I realised we only actually have one small paintbrush in the house - how terrible is that?! Anyhow that had to do but I encountered my first confusion -

Does it matter which side of the screen you draw on?

I was using three books for reference - 1) Lotta prints by Lotta Jansdotter: She instructed to paint on the recessed side but in the pictures appeared to be using the other flat side. 2) Printing By Hand by Lena Corwin, she painted on the flat side. 3) The Art Teachers Guide to Water Based Screen Printing by Dave Fortune, this came with my Daler Rowney System 3 kit and is incredibly annoying as a manual. It covers the drawing fluid technique in only one paragraph before moving onto the photo-emulsion technique which it then discusses for the next 70 odd pages. Considering my kit did not come with the equipment and fluids for the photo-emulsion technique this seems a bit ridiculous. Anyhow this book does not even mention which side to paint on but does have a picture where it is being applied to the recessed side. In the end I decided to draw on the recessed side.

* Step 3: Once dry, cover with Screen Block and again leave to dry. At which point my second confusion arose:

Is the screen block meant to be as thick and stodgy as mine or was I meant to dilute it? If it was meant to be stodgy how was I to cover the entire screen in only one squeedge swipe?

In all three books the screen filler appeared like a thin liquid that would flow smoothly and easily across the screen, however mine was the consistency of mud. I wasn't sure what to use to spread it so I used my squeedge as Lena recommended but this stuff stuck to it big time and covered only patches of my screen. Lena seemed to stress that you should only use one wipe with the squeedge to cover the screen to prevent it becoming stuck and ruining your screen however due to the consistency I had to swipe several times, reapplying screen block to any dry patches and in the end leaving a very uneven covering. Hmm. I did try to water it down to see if this would help but as it is oil-based it would not mix with the water. I didn't really want to try diluting it with paint stripper as I felt this might damage the screen but I'm pretty sure it should not be this consistency even though it is a brand new unopened tin. It was so difficult to get off the squeedge after that I had to immerse the entire thing which I was reluctant to do as it has an untreated wooden handle.

* Step 4: Once dry I rinsed the screen with cold water to remove the screen drawing fluid. The screen block remains and the areas previously filled with drawing fluid will now be the areas the paint comes through when printing. Leave to dry - again!

This is where I am at today, the screen is dry and waiting for me to print with. I have prepared some fabric scraps to test on as well as the actual linen cotton blend I will be using for the tea towels. I am worried the block looks pretty uneven in coverage and I'm sure paint will leak through but hey mistakes are to be learned from! And its pretty exciting to be trying something new with such great (christmas present) potential! I will let you know how the printing itself goes in part 2!