Has anyone done screen printing before? How hard is it to do? I’d be interested in doing posters and cards and other things on paper, not on t-shirts, if that makes a difference. Is it relatively easy to do if you buy a screen printing kit?
I’m asking because every time I go to the art supply store near my apartment, I see the screen printing kits and supplies and think that it might be fun to try screen printing. The store is having a 30% off sale tomorrow, so I thought I might buy a kit at the sale, but I wanted to see if anyone thought it would be worth it. This would just be for fun; I wouldn’t be making posters that needed to look real professional. But since I would be doing this just for fun, I wouldn’t want to try screen printing if it’s extremely time and labor intensive.
So, if anyone has any experience with screen printing or any advice to relate, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks.
It’s messy and there’s some specialized equipment involved, but it’s not hard at all. There’ll be a learning curve while you learn to “play” the pressure to get the effects you want, but it’s a relatively steep curve for most people. Depending on what your printing (photographs versus handmade stencils) it can be expensive.
It’s really fun, but really messy. As lissener said, there’s any number of technologies that you can use. You can just hand cut a paper stencil and use the ink to adhere it to the screen, you can hand cut rubylith for a more robust and repeatable screen, or you can go with photosensitive emulsion with multiple screens for multi-color prints. It’s best to start with one color prints as registration is a real bitch.
If you have a local community college or adult ed program in town, you should just take a class. They will have the proper instruction, lots of different color inks, a purpose built screen cleaning area and racks for drying prints. With a little bit of luck, they will have an IR conveyor belt ink curing oven and a 4 or 6 screen color press.
Instructables: screen printing Does seem messy, but doesn’t seem hard. There are other instructables on the same subject, so I guess pick the one that seems like the least mess for the desired outcome.
The die hard recycler in me wonders if a latex house paint could be used. It would be a good way to get rid of some leftovers.
I did one-color screen printing using photoemulsion for some specialty costuming stuff we sold for cosplayers a few years ago. We used photoemulsion because the design we were printing was delicate and had fine, curved lines. (Even then, it was tricky work because it was very easy to wash out more than you intended of the design.) Printing was also ticklish work because I was printing on thick cotton fabric and getting the fine lines to print properly without allowing the thick lines to become smeary took some practice. (I generally used old T-shirts to practice on before going with the real thing.) Once I had a feel for it, I could knock out printed pieces very quickly and easily, though about 2 out of 10 had to be culled because the lines were either too thick and hence smeary or too thin and hence the fine lines were broken up.
Still, it was very rewarding when the other eight pieces came out as perfect reproductions of a delicate and complex design that was quite salable. And it was loads of fun. I was using a bottom-of-the-line screen printing kit that cost just $30 or $50 so the equipment needn’t be expensive.
My point is, a LOT depends on the design you are printing. Simple designs that lack delicate lines are a LOT easier to print than designs that include delicate detail. And paper being less absorbent would probably have much less problem with smearing. I think you could achieve good results on your project much more easily than I was able to succeed with mine, which was inherently difficult because of the design.
I’ve not tried multicolor printing, but my suspicion is that how difficult it would be would GREATLY depend on how you set up your design. If you created a design that could allow for a millimeter or two of variation in the registration, it might not be so hard to do.
Thanks y’all for the advice. Sounds like it wouldn’t be too terribly hard for me to do.
I hadn’t thought about taking a class. There’s at least one community college I know of near my apartment, I’ll look into seeing if they have any classes.
All my designs would probably be simple anyway since I’m not that advanced of an artist, but I’ll purposely keep the designs simple at least when I’m starting.