How To: change the skin color of your hands...a screen print in pictures

For those interested in how I screen print all my cool stuff (posters, t-shirts, and of course underwear), here are some step by step visuals of my latest project. The Tipper Gores, one of my fav local bands headed by rock master David Korasick, has an upcoming show (May 16 @ Blue Fugue...check it out) and so here is a show poster for them from the sweet conception to bloody birth.

First I started with some sketches of what the band might like. David made a few special requests: flying car, giant squid, birds on telephone wires, abominable snowman, and hidden phallic symbols. I tried to meet some of those demands.

And the winner is...
Bird on Telephone Wire...with Pipe

Next step is to take that design and recreate it as an illustrator file. This is kind of the main template I'm working with, but you don't actually ever use this file directly. It's more of a guide.

What you do use it for is to make separate stencils out of each color you use. When you screen print you only do one color at a time. I'll explain why these are black later.

For the blue background

For blackFor brown (actually used yellow) and red

Ok so next, you print off those stencils onto transparencies. After that, you are ready to go to make some screens! sexy!
The first step in making a screen is coating the screen in photo-sensitive emulsion (below). Usually you need to let these dry overnight, but with a fan on them, you can do it in about 20-30 minutes. Also, it's best to keep these in the dark while drying because they are light sensitive.

Now comes the magic part. Using a light table, I put the stencil face up with the screen on top of it. Then you pile on a bunch of posters to block light and jugs and stuff to add weight and flatten the screen. It depends on the light table, but with this one you keep the lights on for 1 min, 10 seconds. What happens is that the light hardens the emulsion, but where the stencil blocks the light, the emulsion can later be washed away.

So I jumped ahead a little bit...This is the screen for the yellow part of the bird (which is taped over) and it's red jacket. I put them on the same screen to save time/space/emulsion. You have to tape off all the edges so that paint won't leak through to the paper.

Now it's sexy time! Pick the color you want and pour a line of paint at one end of the screen. Before doing any prints, you flood the screen with the squeegee, which means you run the paint a couple times over the screen. It's also a good idea to do a couple test prints on scrap paper. The first two or three will be poopy.
The technique to screen printing is pretty simple. You're just using the squeegee to push paint through the design in the screen onto whatever you want to print on. Always pull the paint toward you, lift up and then flood the screen back again.

This is the completed phase one of four colors.

Next I added the red and yellow details (one at at time of course)I kind of took over the craft studio with this endeavor.

Then I added the black details last, since this color overlapped on top of every thing else.

And this is my baby. The product of about two weeks of work.

I think in total I made around 20, so be looking for them up around campus and downtown.

With many of these, as you maybe can tell, they have their own unique flaws, not one is perfectly how I wanted. That is mainly due to the fact that there are many small details and a four color poster is ambitious for even the expert printer. I've been wanting to do this for a long time and I'm glad I finally got the chance before the craft studio closes for the summer. I can now successfully add screen printer on my ever growing, eclectic resume. It'll sit nicely next to extreme kayaker and duct tape wallet constructionist.