Random Thoughts

Despite not having the proper light, I’m attempting to do some screen printing.  I have to practice, right?

So dissolve the sensitiser and pour it into the emulsion.  It turns green!

Squeegee the emulsion onto the staple side of the screen in a dark-ish room, and let it dry for three hours in a very dark room.

Then put a transparent film positive onto the staple side and wait for an hour, since I have a 100W bulb, which is really too wimpy.  People on the interwebs says that the emulsion turns either blue or a darker green when exposed, but it definitely remains green.  It turns a slightly more dark shade of green, but it’s subtle.

Eurhm…  when I’m printing the shirts, I’m supposed to flip the screen over, so won’t that make these prints mirror images?

YES!  THEY WILL!  D’oh.  I’m supposed to either expose the other side of the screen or flip the transparencies over.  People on the web seem to disagree on the preferred method.  In any case, they way I did it is just wrong.

After an hour, I take the screen into the shower and blast it with cold water on both sides.  As if by magic, lots of the unexposed areas are washed away, leaving a white silk.  Seems to work well on the logo (which was furthest from the lamp), but the bits that were closest to the lamp seem over-exposed and won’t wash away.

In any case, since these are wrongly flipped, I can’t print them anyway…  Or can I? Can I print using the wrong side of the screen?  Worth a try before I wipe the screen, perhaps…

TO BE CONTINUED

While waiting for the screen to dry, I remembered that I had bought some iron-on transfers when I bought the printer, so I printed out a Gary Panter image on one of them.

I had bought transfers for white fabric (instead of black fabric) by accident, so I got out an old white t-shirt.

Peeel.

It actually kinda works.

But the colours aren’t very vibrant, and the black is kinda gray-ish…

After printing out the transfer, it seems like it starts fading…  How about if I prep everything and then do the transfer immediately?

Nopes.  Still kinda washed-out.  And there’s a kinda of transparent residue where there’s “white”, which is kinda off-putting.

Oh, well.  I didn’t expect these to look as good as they do, so…

TO BE CONTINUED

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