Screen Printing: Teaching myself a new process.

       Another community event is approaching, fast, which means it's time for me to pour my heart and soul into learning a new technique and producing more bandannas to gift out! I love my community, the space we build together to exist, and the humans that participate within it. For the past year, I've been dabbling in printmaking, specifically block printing, which I recently wrote a blog on. I decided the for my most recent batch of bandannas I was going to teach myself the art and process of screen printing. I figured with a background in darkroom photography, block printing and with help of the internet I could figure it out. Below is a detailed account of my self-taught screen printing process and the mistakes I made along the way.

       After scouring the internet, watching youtube videos and reading others blogs posts I felt confident enough to go to Sam Flax and invest in materials.

Material List:
- 20"x 24" Mesh Speedball Aluminum Frame Screen - I later learned the dimensions when buying screens are the dimensions of the frame, not of the usable inner dimensions of the actual screen, so I had to shorten my original plan for 20"x 20" image to 17"x 17". Oops!
- 18" Squeegee - Which I later (after realizing the inner dimensions were smaller than 20"x 24") had to get an amazing friend to help me trim it down to 17".
- Speedball Diazo Photo Emulsion Kit - Comes with the Sensitizer, Emulsion & Emulsion remover (used to reclaim and reuse screens).
- Speedball Fabric Screen Printing Ink - Waterbased, non-toxic ink that works well with cotton.
- Speedball Photo Emulsion Flood Bulb, 250 Watt - Used to expose the screen.
- Cotton Bandannas
- Heat gun (a dryer can be used as an alternative)

Simplified Process:
- Create a design.
- Transfer design to transparencies (creating a positive negative).
- Put photo emulsion on screen and let dry in a dark place overnight.
- Expose screen with the 250-watt bulb to burn transparency image onto the screen.
- Wash screen, revealing the recently burned image.
- Screenprint image onto bandannas.
- Let bandannas dry & cure with a heat gun.
- Reclaim screen for future projects.

In-Depth Process:

       First I needed a design, I started off by sketching out my bandana design on paper with a ruler and pencil, making sure I got the proportions correctly before going over it in black. The goal was to make a black and white image, with clean lines and no grey area. The reason for this is when my design is on a transparency and I am exposing it, I want it to come out as clean as possible. There are so many little intricacies that go with screen printing that I don't quite grasp yet since I am teaching myself how to do this as I go along. But I do understand that I am not ready to dabble with half-tones on images, which would introduce grey into the image and would let through a partial amount of ink.

       Once I was finished with the pencil sketch of my drawing it was time to make it black & white. This time I used archival ink so that the integrity of the sketch won't deteriorate years to come. I used a Lamy Al-Star fountain pen with Noodlers Black Bullet Proof Ink as well as a Kuetake Brush Pen to fill in my sketch with black.

The molecule above the brain is Serotonin and the molecule above the heart is Oxytocin. 

       I had a finished, black and white design. Everything I read on the internet told me to get it printed on a transparency with an inkjet printer. I decided to attempt this project last minute and was on a time crunch. After multiple phone calls to local printing shops, none of them had inkjet printers so I figured I would make due and drove to the nearest shop, which ended up being a Kinkos. This is where I start to make some mistakes. I used their large scanner to scan my image onto a USB, the largest size transparency Kinkos had available was 6"x 11", which meant my 17" x 17" drawing was going to be printed onto 6 transparencies... okay, I can deal with that... I'll tape them together. Once I had the six transparencies in hand I realize why the internet stressed inkjet printers. The transparencies were basically all halftoned images, light grey instead of pure black ink. Worried the exposure wouldn't work properly I had them print it twice more and went home with a total of 18 transparencies that I then very carefully taped together.

       The first issue with my process, taping 18 transparencies together created some issues specifically on the anatomical heart. The tape on that part of the transparency didn't let enough light through (creating half-tones) and once I got to the printing stage it printed a square of black. Below you can see the white square of black that lets through to much ink.

       The next step was mixing the Diazo Photo Emulsion and sensitizer together then applying it to the screen. Apparently, you can apply the emulsion mixture in light, but from my years of working in a darkroom that didn't sound logical to me so I choose to paint my screen with this extremely runny liquid in a dark room by candlelight. I taped cardboard over the windows to create as dark of a space as I could and let it dry overnight and while I was at work the next day.

       Exposing the screen. Every source seemed to have different suggested times, distances of the light from the screen, so on and so forth. So I went with the time on the instruction that came with the Diazo Emulsion. Ignoring that it said to set the bulb in a pie pan light fixture (second mistake), I put it in my table lamp, clearly not thinking how hot a 250-watt bulb would quickly become. And set a timer to exposure the screen for twenty minutes. Ten minutes later my lamp fixture is smoking and smells like burnt plastic... the 250-watt bulb melted the plastic lining on the inside of my light fixture, I quickly turned it off and unplugged it, thankfully avoiding dripping plastic on my screen and an electrical fire. The 10-minute exposure proved to be perfect timing, and I probably would have burnt the screen if I hadn't almost started a fire and exposed it for my original estimated 20 minutes.

Photographs of the melted plastic from my light fixture onto the 250-watt bulb.

       The screen exposed for the most part beautifully. In the photograph below you can see what the screen looks like once washed out. When a screen is being exposed, all of the parts that are hit by the UV light, aka the see-through, white parts of the image harden into the screen and stabilize. The parts of the image that don't let light through, aka the black parts of the image don't harden the emulsion and therefore wash out after the screen is exposed (pictured below the greenish areas). This means that when I put ink on the screen and pull the ink across it, the ink can only physically go through the parts that weren't hardened and washed away (pictured below the whiter areas).

       The actual printing of the screens was a trial and error process. The squeegee needs to have the right amount of pressure applied to it and be pulled at around a 45-degree angle to deposit the ink correctly. I found that I needed to do two to three pulls to get an adequately inked bandanna. Also if the bandannas weren't ironed flat enough the wrinkles interfered with the ink deposit, which can be seen below on the right side.

       After the bandannas were printed I left them dry for a few hours, then I took a heat gun to each one in order to cure the ink onto the fabric so the image will last for whoever owns it!

       All in all, I am really happy with how they came out, no two bandannas came out the same and I with a few hickups successfully taught myself how to screenprint and now get to share these gifts with others.

A list of online resources:

How to choose the right mesh count.
In-depth ink comparison chart by brand.
List of common problems & troubleshooting.

If you have any questions or comments please shoot me an email

madelinrella@gmail.com
IG: @madelineire

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