One of the most popular posts on The Art of Doing Stuff has always been my How to Screen Print at home post. People are stunned, shocked and amazed that you don't need a whole workshop or studio to screen print your own tee shirts. Really all you need is an adventurous spirit, a bit of guidance and what I like to refer to as a screw you attitude.
Of course there's gonna be people who tell you that you can't do things. That it's impossible or at the very least hard. A select few people (I'm sure you know some) have an unparalleled knack for making things seem way harder than they actually are. Also. Who cares. So what if something is a little bit hard? So what! You know what's easy? Eating pudding. Eating pudding doesn't even require chewing. You put it in your mouth, mush it around a bit to feel like you're doing something then squash it down your throat. Pudding. Pudding is good and pudding is easy. But this website is not for pudding eaters. This site, The Art of Doing Stuff, is for people who want a little something to chew on.
Besides most things aren't that hard. They're just scary.
Let's talk about screen printing shall we? First off, it's not incredibly easy. It's not pudding.
But it really isn't very hard either. I mean, I taught myself the basics of it through a bit of research and a bunch of trial and error. Some guessing was thrown in there just for fun too.
Even though I successfully screen printed at home, I wanted to learn more about it and get a better understanding of some of the more advanced techniques and principles. So this January I started a semester long Screen Printing course at The Dundas Valley School of Art, a local independent art school. It's the same place I took a couple of photography courses when I wanted to learn how to take a photo without giving myself a migraine.
So welcome to my class. Where none of my photographic skills are at all evident.
First allow me to introduce you to our instructor Laura. She also manages the Print Studio's Facebook page where you can see some of the work I'm doing and the (much better) work of others.
Laura heads up the Printmaking department at The Dundas Valley School of Art.
Here's the funniest thing about the entire class. See that sink in the middle of the room? It's the big white thing with pipes running to it. Yeah, it's made out of wood. And shockingly after our instructor Laura painted and sealed it, it works perfectly fine. Do not be surprised if you see me creating a wood sink in the future. See? There you go. A perfect example of a thing that most people would say NO, you can't, you shouldn't, it won't work, it'll be too hard. Blah, blah.
Screw you and all that.
Everybody's working on something different and everyone is at different levels. Some of the people in the class have taken the course before and they've come back to work on more projects. At the moment I'm working on converting images to grayscale so I can print images that are only one colour, but look like they're several colours. Like my cleaver above. Turns out I got it wrong, lol. It happens. The image is too fine, the dots too small, so when it's printed it looks too solid. I have to adjust it in Photoshop.
Grayscale you see, is when you take an image and convert it in Photoshop so that instead of being solid, it's actually made up of tiny dots (like pixels). The closer the dots are together and the more of them there are, the darker that portion of the photo looks. So the handle of my cleaver has a lot of dots close together, while the blade of the cleaver has fewer dots that are further apart. It looks like it's made with a few different shades of gray and black, but it's all just black dots at different distances, fooling your eye.
So now I'll try again at home to get my dots right.
Here some of my classmates are at the actual printing table. They've come up with the image they want to print, have made their screens and now they're actually doing some printing onto paper.
The first print we all did was a plain, one colour print to get used to the motions and pressure we needed when printing. Once you get that done you can graduate to prints with a few colours or placements. You're allowed to experiment. You're allowed to do just about anything actually.
For instance I had no idea you could do anything like this with screen printing.
It's colour gradation. Or something like that. I got so excited over the technique that I had to make room in my head for all the excitement by forgetting the proper name for it. I actually forgot my own name for a while and Laura the teacher can confirm I made some sort of barking sound when I saw the results the first time.
To do this sort of thing instead of using one colour, you put dots of colour along the screen and kind of wiggle your squeegee as you run the colour across.
A couple of us tried this technique. That's JoJo trying it herself on her rainbow print. She didn't bark. She, like most people, is refined enough not to make animal sounds when she gets excited.
Here's her final print.
JoJo desperately searched the city to buy a hedgehog recently. Every pet store she went into said No. They had no hedgehogs. She then came to class and made this print.
Another woman in the class screen printed monograms onto pillows which is such a great idea.
Along with my cleaver, I also made a print of Cuddles. Starting with a photograph of Cuddles, I erased the background, converted it to a sketch, traced it onto transparency and then hand finished the rest of the shading and details until it looked good.
Then I took the screen I made with that transparency and screen printed over a watercolour I had done of Cuddles. Getting this ...
I have a couple of more classes to go where hopefully I'll perfect this cleaver screen of mine. Because once it gets done, I can get on with printing up some towels and tee shirts to sell on my SHOP page. My goal is to have 50 cleaver tea towels, 50 Cuddles tea towels and maybe a few tee shirts as well to sell.
AND once I'm finished taking my course I'll be organizing a How to Screen Print at home live video course for all of you who want to try it but are a tiny bit afraid to do it without someone walking you through it. By the end of my course you'll be confident enough to do it yourself.
Because it ain't that hard. Any of it.
Tracy Wasser
Totally different topic but, I saw you in the Arizona Republic today!
marilyn
i will buy a cuddles tshirt..i want one i dont want to make one
Lynn Johannson
Me too. Cuddles t-shirt please. Black and white OR color works for me!
Erin
Hey Karen,
Terrific job on the mixed media Cuddles! It's lovely.
Vicky
Chicken Butt. Perfect angle shot!
Patti H
I love screen printing. Haven't done any since I left teaching many years ago. We used laquer film or cut/torn paper in the classroom. I didn't have the opportunity to learn how to use photo emulsion. I so wish I had a local resource to use. So many ideas...
Oh, and that wooden sink! Love, love, love!
Melissa in North Carolina
GREAT POST!!! I love screen printing, my youngest daughter does it.
SuzyMcQ
Do your talents never cease? Just when I thought I might read an Academy Awards recap today, instead you give us a chicken's butt, lovingly executed. Hedgehogs instead of bejeweled actresses....thank you!
jainegayer
I love the Cuddles print and her colors. I like the wooden sink too. Who knew!
Leslie Zuroski
Love your final print of Cuddles atop of a watercolor, wow! And the comments are great. I always learn a lot from your posts AND the comments!
Shannon
This is brilliant! BRILLIANT! I have always wanted to print things on my own but was always convinced it would be too difficult or expensive. I can not wait to see your DIY video. thank you for sharing with us.
Natika
Nice! One day I'd like to try this, but for now I'll just live vicariously.
Mary Werner
You better make several hundred of cuddles! AndI'd like to place my order now just in case you run short.
Linda J Howes
I think that cleaver looks awesome, but I am sure you know best. I have been wanting to do some screen printing myself, tried it a few years back but wasn't that satisfied. Have all the equipment just need the incentive. Maybe this will provide that.
Su
Love Cuddles...
Alexandra
Man, I love the "The answer is NO" print. I can relate, even though not exactly with a hedgehog, but with other things! (As we all can, I'm sure.)
Also: The Cuddles print is great.
sara
I'm just wondering if instead of 'grayscale,' maybe you mean halftone? or gradient? I don't mean to be picky or rude or anything- we own/run a screenprinting shop (and we built the 4-color screenprinting presses ourselves, because we do stuff too!), and we occasionally do grayscale prints with up to four screens with different shades of gray. I guess I'm nervous that someone is going to bring his or her image in to photoshop, press 'grayscale' and wonder why it's not making a great gradient for their screen prints!
Ugh, that sounded so bitchy. I'm sorry. Do you, like, want some money out of my wallet or something?
Mary Werner
You sounded more like you were trying to be helpful. I heard grayscale used in photography a lot and in photo shop like apps. It's probably one of those terms that people use so much but has different meanings for pros. I'll take some of your money - I want to buy one of her cuddles towels.
Karen
Yup, you're right Sara. Halftone. I misspoke. Well ... for the cleaver it was grayscale, then halftone. :) ~ karen!
Auntiepatch
Sign me up! I wish we had classes like that here!
Tigersmom
I'm obviously up way past my bedtime to be this early in the comments.
I did some silk screen printing in high school. I remember the solvent used to remove the film off the screens destroyed my nail polish.
We also did prints by scoring a design onto meat packaging Styrofoam and rolling ink over it and then stamping it on paper in the same printmaking class.
I must go investigate this SHOP section. I had forgotten all about it.
Love the angle you chose to do of Cuddles. The print is very cool. I would have barked or drooled or maybe even peed when I saw it.
Nancy
You must know today I darned. A dish cloth. It was crocheted by my ex mother in law when she was unable to remember how to do much else. Thank you for your Laura Ingalls ways.
Karen
I'm there for you Nancy. ~ karen!
Laura Bee
I love that you darned Nancy :) I have slippers my Nana knit for me. Two pairs I keep darning & one is stashed away for when the other two finally are too worn out. She's been gone since 2002 and I miss her everyday, but everyday there is something that reminds me of her & makes me smile.
Barb
Love this post but please tell JoJo that hedgehogs stink. My sister raised them for a while in So Cal some years ago. And they were illegal as hell at the time as well. May still be illegal, I dunno. True story though. They are cute but they stink. I'll take chickens over hedgehogs any time. Or goats. Or a pot belly pig maybe?