Vector Color Separation Silkscreen Behind the Scenes

Our first step involved a lot of sketching and brainstorming, we utilized our group chat to share sketches we made and make a final decision on which one we thought we should use as our final, and what colors it would be. We decided to go with Hugo's sketch, which went through a few phases first in pencil then with an ink outline and a few drafts.

Hugo took a photo of his final sketch and then brought it into Illustrator. He first created a layer, duplicated the text and pushed it to the back. Then he selected everything and made a blend out of it. With the blend mode, you can make multiple copies so he set it to 90 to create the blending illusion. Before exporting, he added registration marks to all four corners of the pages.

With Roger's help, we printed both color separation layers in black on waterproof inkjet transparency film for silkscreen printing. We're now ready for the next step of transferring our design to a screen!

Before the design can be transferred, the silkscreens first have to be prepared with emulsion on both sides. Once the emulsion is on, the screens have to dry for about 3 hours. This application is done in a dark room.

Once your emulsion is dry, you take the film one layer of your design is printed on and lay it on top of the silkscreen. We added to pieces of tape to the corners to keep it from moving, and set a piece of glass on top of that. This setup then sits under a blacklight for ten minutes. If you have a design with words, make sure it is backwards on top of the screen so it prints correctly. The photo on the left shows we forgot to make it backwards, and had to redo this step to get a correct print. After the timer is up, you rinse the screen with water at high pressure to reveal your design.

The next step is taping off the edges of your frame, and covering any registration marks that are visible. Once your frame is tightened and aligned, you pour the ink into one end of the frame and flood the screen by pulling the squeegee through the ink back towards you.

After the screen is flooded, you push the frame down flat and push the squeegee forward. This pushes the ink through your design on the screen and onto the poster or fabric you're printing on.

Here is the final product with the second color added!

Appreciate

Credits:

Created with an image by Jason - "screen printing custom t-shirts or posters"