Silkscreen with me

Working with students can all terrifying, exhilarating and most importantly, full of laughter.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to explore an alternative method for Silkscreen Printing. Here is a little introduction to What is SilkScreen Printing? This is a technique also known as Screen Printing that was made popular in the late 18th century. History has it that this technique first appeared in Asia in the 900s. It is a hand-printing technique that as the name suggests uses a screen made of mesh that has been stretched over a frame and upon which a design would be placed for printing with various colours.

Traditionally, you would expose the screen with UV lighting to create a positive-negative effect. The negative area is where the the ink will fall through. The actual process can take up a day at least with the use of various chemicals and steps.

That being said, the alternative method uses a gel-like substance that is directly drawn onto the screen. I used products from Daler Rowney (to be honest, there are a lot of other options – for instance, Speedball but in most of my works, I tend to be swayed to using Daler Rowney). As I was saying, the gel-like substance is called Screen Drawing Fluid from the System3 Series and this is coupled with the Removable Screen Block. Both of these are the essentials to creating a good alternative to silkscreen. Added to it is sheer patience as you may very well not achieve it in your first few tries.