Screen Printing

The three elements that make the screen printing are the image carrier, the squeegee and the water-based ink

There is the water-based mesh that is tightly stretched over a frame either made out of wood or metal. The image/stencil is produced on the screen photo-chemically via machine.
After the process of placing the image onto the screen, the stencil design is then washed off, leaving a see-through area where the ink can pass through and make a printed design.
This is then needed to dry completely before inking.
Screen printing can print on a whole variety of substances, such as paper, paperboard, plastic, metal, glass and fabrics for industrial products that could include advertising, labels etc that can be of any shape, thickness and size.

For my screen printing experience, I will be using paper, newspaper, calico, coloured paper and printed photographs (low quality).
Example of my design on scrumpled up newspaper below.


The screen, when dried, should be placed in position by cello-taping the outlines of the frame to the table, so that one does not forget where the screen is exactly placed when it has accidently moved. The material, also, is cello-taped down to the table each time to make sure that this doesn't move either whilst the manual printing is in process.
Doing this, from experience, shows a better quality of line. My chosen material is then applied by placing it under the screen, in the position of the stencil; the ink is the spooned evenly above the stencil so the squeegee can place pressure whilst scraping the ink downwards. This process makes the ink to go through the fine mesh openings when drawn over the design. For this experiementation, I was told to do four applications of the squeegee to get a decent stencil design.
When the stencil is then printed unto the desired material, I would hold up the screen and remove the design, placing it in the drying rack.
After that, the process is finished. If one wanted to change the ink colour, the screen would have to go through the process of being washed and dried every time. If one wanted to put more than one colour on the finished stencil, this is a good way to do it. Either that way, or to get a good and different effect, one would evenly put the first colour untop of the top of the stencil then place different spoonfuls of another colour in different areas of the line where the squeegee would commence the scraping of the ink downwards; I have done this and I can say that it is not a good way of getting two colours in the same design.

I did all of this according to my lecturer's instructions and found that this process is very rewarding in the fact that I can repeatedly do my design over and over and there would be no damage or difference within the process. However, it is a very time consuming process.