Print Workshop Day Three: Lino + Screen Printing

Hey guys! Hope you've been having a good weekend. I have so far and not just because I don't work Sunday's anymore (wooo!). Mine's been quite full up to now, I've been to a clothes up-cycle evening that I mentioned not so long ago more about that later on. I'm also about to go on a final run to train for the 10k I'm doing next Sunday more on that later too!

Today though I want to tell you all about the final day of printing I did yesterday at the print workshop. They definitely saved the best for last!

Lino

This was sooo fun because it's so easy and you almost always get a good result.  

It's very simple. We carved out our image from a piece of lino and inked it up. For this though, we didn't use a press where the plate and the paper would go through big rollers. We did it on a huge cast iron imperial press which lowered a large block onto them to print the image. 

This was my attempt and you can see a really nice grainy-ness on the print which happened by accident because I carved into the rough side of the lino rather than the smooth side. I'm glad I did!

Screen Printing

This was so interesting to do. There's so much preparation goes into getting the screen ready (coating the screen in a light sensitive emulsion, exposing it to uv light..) and then the printing part only takes a few seconds! It's really fun to do though.

We made a few backgrounds that we would print our image onto at the end. We did these by creating paper stencils of various shapes and printing them. It was a good way of getting to grips with the technique before printing our artwork that we'd brought in.

This one above I abandoned because I accidentally printed the blue waves over the green waves but now I'm looking at it again I actually like how it turned out!

The artwork I chose for my screen was one of my card designs from my own range. This below is it as a stencil on a screen after the whole UV hoo haa.

To be honest what I'm most excited about screen printing onto is a tote bag! Now I can proudly display my own design, printed by my own hands!

I'm so glad to have been to these classes. I now can see so many opportunities to re-invent my designs and all the ways I could print them. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you're curious about printing at all you should definitely get yourself signed up for some classes. You wont regret it!

So who else has been creative this weekend?

oxoxo