Vernon Street - Screen-printing top-up

I was rather scared of using screen-printing, I wanted to use the free time I was getting to know my way around Screen printing and build my confidence up for it on the upcoming brief for Design for print.

I wasn't sure what image I wanted to screen print so I created some concepts I could create in Illustrator quickly, I looked into my Nobrow magazines and comics for inspiration but I couldn't think of anything I'd really like to screen print all to much. 

Chance cards seemed like a good idea but they're a bit to boring compared to the others.

I thought It'd be cool as a last minute idea to turn one of the monopoly property cards into a big screen print so I decided to pick my favourite properties to own: Mayfair, Bond street and Pall mall.

I also took into consideration how I could possibly use fluorescent inks to enhance them but I decided against it later on instead I opted to do Mayfair. I thought I could possibly do the mortgaged side to the card as well but I wasn't sure how well that would work out so I skipped it.

I live traced it from a high resolution scan, and then split it, because I wanted the Mayfair a different colour to the rest of the card. I added an outline around the information so I looked like the card was in the middle instead of having the sheet of paper the card. I liked this as I finished it off rather well.

We went down to Vernon Street to do our screen printing confidence booster, this was because I found the staff in the Vernon street print room nicer and It just has a better atmosphere to it then the one in Blenheim walk, which is scattered about and I just feel like I'm intruding when I go in there. 

Neil showed us how to properly clean a previously used screen thoroughly which was a very helpful reminder and was great after how ever many months from having the induction as It's all very vague to me now, because I never used the screen printing facilities for my work in the 1st year. 

There was a sheet on the wall next to the UV exposer which listed all the timings for exposing a screen, Grace exposed her's first at the time on the wall (150) and it slightly over exposed her screen, Alex did his 10 seconds down and I did mine 5 more down. From what it seemed It was a lot more effective but It's hard to say because mine and Alex's work didn't include so much fill and was more lines then anything else.

You spot how well the screen is exposed by the speckles of green left over in the empty space left over from exposure.

This part felt like been in primary school, mixing our colours, I really enjoyed it, my purple for Mayfair turned out spot on from mixing the red and blue together. The measures for the paint and binder was 1/3 paint to 2/3 binder.

I choose to buy from nice stock (60p for 1m x 50cm - If I remember correctly, impressive) from Neil for a few personal copies for my self and I printed the rest on the free cartridge paper, I went over the top because I was enjoying making them too much.

This just proves how cost effective it was to print on screens for 

I was surprised at how effective using the masking tape and how well it lined up!

Neil fitted the two colours on the one screen and simply said to cover up the other half with paper, genius, I thought it was rather clever. I was confused at how they were to all align at first but then...

Once I'd done printing all of the black, I printed the purple onto the plastic sheet and then aligned the print and used the masking tape to keep it in place for the following prints and it worked so well I didn't even have to think about alignment anymore it just worked. 

Brill.

After I had cleaned the screen, and the workspace all the prints were fully dry, I didn't expect it to be so easy to screen print, I was always afraid It was gonna be a long and lengthy process, I don't know why I haven't used it before It just seems to effective and cost effective compared to Digital print.

 But I suppose it's then limited to how many colours you use by that sense. The setting up period is lengthy but in the end you gain a really nice aesthetic to each print and you can do multiple ones of them rather quickly which is great.

Size comparison, the print was A3. 

I'm really feeling Screen printing a lot now compared to before where it was unthinkable, I wish I picked it up earlier