Sketchbooks to screen print - Computers in the printmaking process
Monday, 02 February 2009 00:00
My work as an artist printmaker usually involves a process which moves from my initial sketchbook images through computer digital manipulation, output at a plan printing shop and the end print being lovingly individually hand screen printed. I thought it might be useful to outline my process.
This article outlines the process surrounding my print "Blizzard Crows"
I spent an hour on a freezing cold day in Snowdon, Wales, near the base of the mountain Tryfyn watching the crows wheeling and flying in the driving snow. Quick drawings in my sketchbook captured the crows huddled against the flurries of driving snow in the trees before freezing fingers forced me back to the warmth of the car.
Creating the image in Photoshop
Back at home I scanned the pages from the sketchbook into my computer and imported them into Adobe Photoshop. I generally use a combination of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to manipulate my images. Once in Photoshop I cleaned up the image, removing marks I didn’t like and then increased the contrast to ensure that the finished print would be sharp and would print satisfactorily. I then split the image into colour separations. One layer for each different colour I was going to print. In the case of Blizzard Crows this was 3 colours... Black, Grey and Blue/Grey for the snow.
Once I was happy with the image, composition and size I saved the image as a TIFF file and compressed it as a ZIP in order to make it easier to send to the company who would print it out for me. I then emailed the artwork file to an Architectural Plan Printing company to output onto heavy duty tracing paper. I generally use www.ezeeplan.co.uk to output my artwork.
To make the print, it doesn’t matter that the tracing paper is opaque - it’s still fine for exposing a screen. I also sometimes print out the image direct from my computer onto Overhead Projector Acetate [available from any Stationery Shop] using my A4 printer if the artwork is only small.
Once I had the image printed onto tracing paper it was time to get into the screen printing studio and enjoy getting my hands dirty. I exposed the screen photographically from the tracing paper printouts using an ultraviolet screen table. I then hand printed each image individually onto heavyweight paper using Acrylic paint mixed with screen medium. Each image in the edition is hand pulled on the screenbed by my own fair hands, concluding a satisfyingly Artisan end to the process.
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