Screen-printing Workshop

I've always wanted to screen print so was very much looking forward to this part of the workshop.

After explaining the basic screen printing techniques and what we were going to be doing Jasmine showed us how to apply the emulsifier to the screen which then needs to dry.

The images were printed on to acetate (at The Copy Shop) then place face down on the dried screen and exposed to an ultraviolet light source for a short period of time.

After that the screen get washed thoroughly and the areas of emulsion not exposed to the light dissolve and wash away leaving a negative stencil of the image.

..and TA DA..my first ever screen-print!

(The image is of the internet so not my own but I want to try again using my own image)

While waiting for screens to dry etc I used the photocopied

image as a transfer onto a block of wood for a woodcut.

A thin coat of gel medium is spread over  the wood surface and once dry the image is adhered face down with a thin coating too. Once that's completely dry (I used a hair-dryer to speed things up) with a damp finger gently rub the paper to lift it away leaving behind the transferred image. I hadn't used this technique in the previous week as I'd hand-drawn my image (leaves) on to the block so it was good to have some time to do an image transfer while waiting for screens to dry.

There was a few library books for us to read/look through. This looked like a good (easy-to-understand) book so took a photo so I could look into seeing if I can purchase a copy for myself.

We will be learning about letter setting next. I'm going to add some text to the screen printed tree image.