BT Tower A2 2 Colour Screen Prints
Having recently taken up screen printing more serious, which is something that I have always wanted to do, I had taken many short courses in the past, and this was a good point to take it more serious since I have started to hand draw much of my work. My London series of drawings seemed like a good first choice of material and subject to screen print. I choose the BT Tower as I think its a great piece of architecture, it still manages to fit in well if not just as well as all the new architecture that seems to be going up in London every week, which mostly seem like greenhouses with the vast Glass Facades.
I redrew most of the BT Tower drawing to clean up the lines and make it look less like a sketch which is what it looked like drawn in my layout pad using my Rotring pens. Once all the lines were redrawn, the image was divided into 2 layers the blue as one colour and the black lines as the others. I had the layered files printed on to A2 acetates, printed at Colourcentric Digital printers based at London Bridge, which offer an easy service, quick and friendly.
It was a hop skip and a jump, a train ride down to Peckham Print Studio. with my screen printing enthusiasm through the roof, at 5:30 pm, I got cracking with my screen printing, I had a quick word with Tom, at how much Ink I would need for 75 prints, As Tom Exclaimed 75!? I quickly edited that number down to 25, thinking I might be out my depth, and what would I do with 75 prints anyway?
I was shown the ropes, I exposed the screen, washed it out, dried the screen, laid the screen on the print bed, registered the artwork to the Southbank Smooth 310gsm paper, I didn’t wash the screen out proper, and for that reason, the ink was not coming to the screen properly, Crap, I undid everything, rewashed the screen, went through the who process as described again, and this time it was printing well, with ink running out, and nearing 25 prints, I just managed to complete the first colour. A pain with only having one screen, I was learning quickly screen print is very tough. I did the same for the line work artwork. Interestingly while registering the second colour on to the printed 1st layer, I chose to offset the print slightly to the right, in my opinion, I think it makes the print work better and I was excited to finish printing. From start to finish 2 colour A2 prints of 25 took 6 hours roughly, I locked up and finished at 11 pm, Happy to finish my screen printing.
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