Screen Printing
Screen Printing, or Serigraphy, is a stencil based form of printmaking, where ink is pushed through a fine mesh and a stencil is used to block some of the ink from reaching the paper.
The stencil can be paper or vinyl, cut into shapes, but for the most detailed stencils, I use photo-sensitive emulsion. This is coated onto the screen and exposed to UV light where it hardens.
The design is made by drawing onto a transparent material, like tracing paper, where your drawn or painted lines stop the emulsion from hardening and leave a portion of the screen ‘open’.
You can achieve very fine detail in your prints using this method, as the transparency of this shell design was one I drew using hundreds of tiny dots, all of which made it into the final print.
I love to use gold leaf in my screen prints. This adds an extra dimension to the art.
The gold leaf is added onto an area that is printed with gold leaf size, then the excess gently brushed away.
I sometimes print at Edinburgh Printmakers, a fully equipped open access studio (that also runs great courses!).
I can also print at home or in my art stusio, and you can see my home screen print process in this video.