Screen Making

The stencil is where the artwork is made. A stencil can be a hand-cut or torn mask applied directly to the screen, or an image hand-drawn or painted into the screen mesh. Where you paint/block out will remain unprinted.

Alternatively, you can make a positive transparency and expose it on a light-sensitive emulsion that will harden and create a stencil. A positive transparency can be made by drawing or painting onto transparent film with anything dark that can block out light, you can use black acrylic paint, tusche washes, crayons, some permanent makers, Indian ink.

You can also print laserjet images onto special film to create photographic digital transparencies. Of course, you can also create an image using a combination of all these techniques, which just goes to show how versatile screen printing is.