I promised to show the progression of a silkscreen from beginning sketch to finished product. For those of you who don’t care, or if readin’ makes your brain meat hurt, stop here and just consider the above picture a sneak peek of what will become a sweet T-shirt.
For the rest of you, who are most likely art dorks, curious parties, down right awesome and/or a combination therein. I bring to you steps two and three! Last time we caught up I had a rough sketch and an idea. That was step one, now STEP TWO: Time to flesh that sketch/idea out by way of a finished drawing. I decided to go with a little Birth of Venus meets Vargas girls situation here. The finished drawing you see above now needs to move into step 3.
STEP THREE: Color separation
So now that I have my image ready for color separation, it’s time to think like a printer. Silks screens are essentially vehicles for printing sophisticated stencils. Each color needs to have its own screen. The more colors you use, the more screens you need. It is a great idea to let the color of the fabric (or paper) work as a design element. I have done just that in this sketch, the gray tone is going to be the color of the shirt. This cuts out a third screen, without sacrificing visual complexity, and it makes my job a lot easier. Taking that into consideration we have only two colors left, meaning…you guessed it two screens need to be made.
Separate your colors into separate black drawings. Mine break down into one line work screen (fig.1), and one color block screen (fig.2). Easy enough. These images will eventually turn into high density ink films. Exciting, I know. However step 4 is all about screen coating! …but that is another post. You probably have to go and lye back with a cool compress on your forehead, I understand screen printing IS pretty riveting.
*ALSO: these images were too big to fit on the scanner bed so excuse the poor photo quality as my camera is a jerk.
fig. 1
fig. 2
