Random Thoughts

I went to an art supplies store and got screen printing supplies.  Very nice shop.

The thing I’m missing now is 1) better transparencies and or a better printer and 2) a light source to do the exposure of the photo emulsion.

I’ve ordered some “digital negative” transparencies from the interwebs, so I’ll have to wait for those. But meanwhile, I bought some OHP transparencies from the Panduro hobby store just to see what would happen:

These are supposedly “laser/inkjet” transparencies, but they come out of the printer dripping wet and curled up.  Not very promising, but the black is very black, so perhaps it’s possible to use these if I’m super-careful about letting them dry for half an hour before touching them…

For the light source, I need something like a 150-250W incandescent light source.  So I went to a photo store and told them about my project, and they said that nothing they had seemed usable because of “colour correctness” or stuff.

Which seems odd.  A 250W incandescent lamp is a 250W incandescent lamp, isn’t it?  Anyway, I’ve just ordered some 150W bulbs off of the net, and I’ll use a desk lamp, and see how that works…

TO BE CONTINUED

TO BE CONTINUED

I’ve been meaning to get started with screen printing t-shirts.  Because of reasons.

I have done some experiments with Inkodye, but that didn’t seem all that exciting.  But in any case, you need a printer to print out transparent negatives (for Inkodye) or positives (for screen printing).  So I got an HP Officejet 7110, because 1) it’s cheap, and 2) it can print out A3 paper and transparencies, and I want big images.

The 7110 prints beautifully on paper.  The blacks are very black and juicy.  However, with the transparencies I’ve bought, it all looks a bit off.

See?  The black is very … pebbly, and there’s a white line every three centimeters.

So I’m not sure whether that’s going to work.  I’ve tried using two different types of transparencies, and jiggling all the paper types the printer has, but I’m still getting those lines every three centimeters.  It may be good enough — I’ve not actually tried making a t-shirt with these prints yet.

However, there’s apparently a transparency type called “film negative”, that’s supposed to be used when people are developing film.  Which you’d think would work well for this type of stuff.

So I’ve ordered that, but I’m not all that hopeful.  I may have to buy a better (i.e., more expensive) printer…

TO BE CONTINUED