Workshop Treat: Learning how to screen print using stencils

When I was at University one of my tutors basically told be to stay away from print.  I was very messy and didn't grasp the concept of what was involved in the process.  At the time I found the whole process very long with minimal results.  For example, it takes you so long to prepare a collograph, cutting it out, attaching the pieces to the card, sealing it etc. Then you have a so, so print or in my case many messy prints.

Today I had a go at screen printing, which I didn't do at uni.  It seems on the surface a simple way to produce an image. But no, yet again there was lots of preparation to produce a single image.  This was going to be a two colour print so I learnt about colour separation and also how my stencil would or wouldn't work (that bit I definitely found difficult, I wanted more detail in the ears and was unable to do this because you can't have floaters).


Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my day and feel confident that I could do this at home with minimal equipment which is how I like it.  Achievable, yes.  Lots of practice needed, most definitely.

Sarah Holden, the tutor for the day was most encouraging and I did glean a nugget from her. "As you do each print you will learn what not to do next time" (this sounded like I was back at Uni). I remember at the time thinking, that if I knew what I was doing in the first place I would know what not to do.  Despite this I battled on with my inner niggles.

Print for me,  is a back to front technique, always working in the opposite direction from what you expect.  I'm afraid my brain struggles a lot with that.  It's the negative space thing again. I guess if you were doing it all the time it would become second nature.

Printing the first colour was fairly straightforward apart from not flooding the screen enough or putting too much paint when I went across the screen a  second time, and getting paint in places that wasn't supposed to have paint.  That sounded very familiar.

When it came to the second colour, things got a little more technical.  We had to print onto a plastic sheet which would serve as the registration guide to line the two colour prints  up. Again, easier said than done.  It was very fiddly trying to get the two images to line up.  I was just off each time, but I think perhaps an acetate sheet would be better than using a plastic document over, it was way too flimsy and moved about too much when you were trying to line things up.

Anyway, here's my most successful print that just happened to be on calico fabric, which I use a lot in my work.  It's supposed to be my poodle, Lola.  A little thin in the face perhaps but I'm happy.  I will definitely be investing in the basic equipment to make up a few screens for printing and explore this further.