Multi Colour Screen Print tutorial

I am participating in a printmaking group exhibition/exchange next month, and so I am currently in the process of making 35 screenprints. Screen printing wasn't covered in my arts degree, so I taught myself. I love the industrial-ness of the resulting prints. I find the whole process fascinating and while there are plenty of tutorials available, a lot of them are confusing, or focus mainly on creating the stencil using emulsion and light boxes.

I use the drawing fluid and screen filler method, and while at some point I'd love to have a more complex set up and be able to create far more intricate prints, for now this suffices well. So I thought I'd post a tutorial on how to create a multiple colour screen print using this method.

Step one is to gather your supplies:

I use Speedball Drawing Fluid and Screen Filler - I bought them online via Dick Blick but most art supply stores will stock them. You will need a squeegee, screens (not in this picture), ink (in this image you can see screen ink as well as white acrylic paint and print paste which when added together make screen ink for paper prints!) and also something to clean your screens. I use Washing Soda which you can buy cheaply at most supermarkets - you can buy dedicated screen cleaners but they are expensive and washing soda and a nail scrubbing brush do the same job for much less.



Step two is to choose your design and translate it to different layers of colour.

 

My image is a sketch I did (excuse the sideways photos). It was the right size and I thought it would translate well with the shadows and highlights to a screen printed image. 

I traced over the image to create a line drawing, then I retraced that drawing onto two sheets - the first one (red in this photo) is what will form the black outline and the last layer of my image. The other one (black in this photo) is what will be the middle layer of my print.



Step three is to create a registration for your screens. This is to make sure all your layers print in the same place on the image (so over the top of each other).

I have plastic over my backing plate for easier clean up of ink. Place your printing paper on the plate, place your original traced image over the top and move it around until you have the desired location for your final image on your print paper. Take some tape (masking tape or paper tape) and tape the outline of two or three sides. (see the brown tape in the above image).

The above image shows the paper butted up against the top left corner of the tape - if I place all my papers at this spot, they will all print on the same place on the paper, provided my paper is all the same size as well. (I use a scrap piece of paper cut the same size as my desired final paper size for all these steps so as to not mark my good paper).
Keeping your traced image on top of your paper, lay a screen over the top of them, and secure it to the backing plate. Then trace your image onto your screen using a graphite pencil. Do this for each screen layer - that is, use your separate layer traces for each screen colour you  want. (This is why you made separate traced layers earlier).

After you have sketched all of your screen layers, take your screens and 'paint' over the lines you've drawn with the blue drawing fluid.

 Let that dry and then pour some of the brown screen filler over your screen, and use your squeegee to smooth it over the screen (including over the areas you've painted with blue drawing fluid). Once that is dry, you can put your screen under running water and using your fingers, gently rub over the screen - the areas you painted with drawing fluid will come away, leaving clear open screen mesh. (This is where your ink will flow through).

So when you have done that you will be left with something like this:

The white areas are where the ink will flow through the screen and the brown is the screen filler. (Ignore the darker areas on my screens - that's just where the mesh is ink stained from previous prints and won't affect the final print in any way).

I am including an initial layer of background colour in my print, so I painted free hand onto a third screen.

Again, ignore the black lines on the screen, the white area is what I will be printing.

Next step is to set up your first practice print (doing a few practice prints allows you to make sure your image will turn out like you want, that you haven't made any mistakes with the stencils you've created, and to test your colours)
Put your paper in place on your backing plate, and secure your first screen into the plate.

I find that flooding my screen results in better prints, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary if you don't want to do it. To do it, you place ink on the top of your screen and squeegee down, but keep your screen off your paper for this first go through.

Now you can lay your screen flat onto the paper, put a little more ink on the screen, and holding your squeegee at a 45 degree angle, pull smoothly downwards towards you, essentially scraping the ink over the mesh. Keep your strokes nice and smooth, and repeat until you have a nice even coverage. (If you need to lift your screen to check the ink, do so slowly and carefully so as to not move the paper and thereby ruin your registration!)

You can then take out your paper, and set it aside to dry. I don't have a drying rack, and if you are making small editions you can get by without one. But for this large edition I needed something to dry the prints without fear of them getting dirty, or dusty, or one of the children inadvertently 'investigating' and accidentally ruining my hard work!!

So I improvised! I have used our clothes rack, and to dry the prints I simply place a small piece of masking tape in the centre of the BACK of the print (masking tape because it won't rip the paper when I remove it), and tape the paper to the wires like so:

I can fit my edition of 35 onto this rack no problems, the prints will dry straight without buckling or touching each other and smudging the ink! Genius! After the first layer is dry, you take the same piece of paper and making sure your registration lines up, repeat the inking process with your second colour, lay it aside to dry and repeat for your third colour and so on.


Just to possibly make it a little clearer, here are the three individual 'layers' from my three separate screens, printed on three separate sheets of paper.

And here is the image printed on one sheet of paper as a final screenprint.

Screenprinting is much like reduction lino printing, in that you need to mask away the areas that you want to keep white. So long as you remember that the parts you paint with blue drawing fluid are the parts you want to have colour on your print, and the parts you want to keep white (or any other colour you've already inked up), should be covered in screen filler (the brown stuff), you can't go too wrong! But like any printing process, it only really becomes clearer once you are doing it. It's easy to get confused but once you start printing it will make sense to you!