STENCILLING METHOD
Now this is my favourite part of the whole course, screen printing. I absolutely love this process and have always wanted to do this again after a brief course but it proves to be rather difficult to find a place that does it. Anyway here at East london Printmaker they do so that is great!
Stencilling method is basically cutting paper and carry it out very much like you would with stencilling, but in this case with the screen printing context.
I already had an image, an cartoonish version of the chrysler building and wanted to use colour stenciling to put in the sky and some simple building shapes. A note about my cartoon building - I used polymer ink ( non water soluble when dry, similar to indian ink) on 'true grain' paper, so it is translucent and holds the ink well. Note that it does take a while to dry so do this early.
1) Use the lightbox so you can superimpose on the image to see how you want to achieve the background to complement your original image.
2)Decide on the design and then cut on newsprint ( will last about 20 prints despiite looking a bit fragile, even a very fine point of the building works ok, but a bit problematic with the small window opening) using a scarpal to cut OUT the area you want to see the ink.
3) Now choose the colour you want, from basic acrylic ink range( water soluble) and then mix it with equal amount of the acrylic binding medium to stop it from drying too quickly. Note the more of this medium you put the more translucent the paint becomes. Mix throughly well.
4) Next take a screen and tape the newsprint securely to it, and make preparation next to your screen print work area, and have the following ready -
- newspaper to cover the table, extra for ink surface
- exact size papers( otherwise the setting out will not work!)
- white masking tape for register marks
- brown masking tape for emergency masking of the screen mesh
- ink
- squeegee
- cleaning cloth
- bucket of water with sponge
- tape an acetate on the board for testing
- hard cardboard ( to wipe the ink from squeegee and the frame and save!)
5) Set up and tighten the frame to the machine, put some paint on, and wipe the squeegee up when the whole machine is lifted up and then pull it down and wipe the squeegee with paint down to print the image on the acetate
6) review the image on the acetate and put the paper underneath to position it in the location you want. Then put white masking tapes at the corners for locating further prints
7) Have the squeegee at a 45 deg angle up ( just to position and flood the frame to give it the ink) and bring it the other way around down to actually print on the paper. Do it once so there won't be too much ink. Do it evenly, slowly and steadily and watch out for the amount of ink that is being printed, if need be run it once over)
8) After printing wash the frame and clean everything up and throw away newsprint.
TIPS:
a) The machine when turn on will suck the paper down and put it in place.
