Screen Printing

Design in Colour
Oct 3, 2022
2 min read

As with most creative people I enjoy dipping into new arts, crafts and generally exploring how that can be used within my designs. Screen printing was something that had interested me for a while, and as soon as I saw a

workshop advertised at The Custard Factory in Birmingham I signed up. The workshop was a very quick introduction to the basics of screen

printing, but was enough to start you off, if you want to pursue this.

Screen printing originates back to AD221 in China as a way of transferring designs onto fabric. Following on from this the Japanese used stencilled techniques that were used to make images. They used human hair to form

the mess on the plates. It was much later in 1907 in England, a man called Samuel Simon patented the screen as the one we are most familiar with today.

One of the most famous artist for using this technique is Andy Warhol. During the 1960's he produced pieces using screen printing. One of his most famous pieces probably being Marilyn Monroe. An image that has been reproduced many times over

Screening is in its basic terms is paint pushed through a mess and template to form images. You can use layering technique to apply different colours

Here's an image of the first layer.

(Wearing a pink coat with long sleeves probably wasn't a great idea but luckily didn't get any paint on me)

Using a squeegee you drag the paint along the template taped inside the screen. The paint pushed through the mess below onto your chosen medium (In this case paper)

After a quick blast with the hairdryer it was ready for the second layer.

And then ta dahh !!

This was my finally piece. Which I'm quite happy with as a first attempt. I'm lucky that whilst at University they have print club which before I broke up for the summer I started, I also had a go at other techniques using the rolling machine.

Coming back to uni this September is

definitely something I want to continue to experiment with. If you fancy having a go there are many courses up and down the country.

The app Eventbrite is great for finding fun things to do.

Or you can buy a starter kit yourself which has all the basics in you need I've listed a few below with where to buy from to get you going.