I decided that it was time to learn a new skill, one that I could use to print the artwork that I make for fun in my spare time. It was a rough road to start but eventually it paid off!
The first lesson: Failure
Why hello there! I hear that you’re going to try and print your own silkscreen posters. I know that you may not want to hear this but I definitely failed a lot at first so don’t get too down on yourself if the process overwhelms you at first.
In fact I failed so many times that I almost quit the entire thing all together but I had just been accepted into a poster show and I absolutely didn’t want to be left out. Screenprinting is a delicate process and experience is the only way to figure it out. It didn’t matter how many youtube videos I watched beforehand, actually doing it was far different than I realized.
Prepping your negatives
I printed my negatives on very thin large format paper from fed ex. This isn’t as nice as a transparency but its much more cost effective and just requires you to adjust your exposure times to this method.
One thing they recommend doing is to do a test exposure first. Choose where you will set your screen and where your UV exposure light will sit. Add emulsion to a screen…
