What is the outcome of my first silkscreen layer?
I successfully managed to print out my first photoshop layer of Chairman Mao onto an A2 size inkjet Acetate and looks very clear quality with no splodge marks. After that Glen has had to mix some new emulsion because the other emulsion was out of date so he had done that and managed to project my stencil image onto silkscreen. But… there was something that I was not expecting…
Were there any problems that I faced during this process?
There was in fact quite a big problem that I witnessed and yet again this was not knew to me as I have experienced this problem before… For the second time or maybe so many times running, the technician has made an error within the emulsion and did not put on enough thickness of emulsion which has left it a bit short exposured. Meaning that there was not enough emulsion on one part of my image which is located near the bottom of my image.
There was another problem with the colouring of the green that I mixed for Chairman Mao’s suit and hat. The new inks that I used were blue and yellow and these were used so that I can make a nice dark green. After this, the pigment seemed dark enough but when I used it to print the first 5 prints, it turned out to be a lime green.
How did I manage to get through these problems?
So in the end my technician managed to put some red colour filler onto the gap that was not exposed enough and this managed to work nicely making sure that any ink will not travel through the torn looking gap.
As for the green inks, I managed to mix up some more using exactly the same formula but only adding a little black, making it darker and should be ready to use for the next batch of 10 prints that I hope to do later on.
What is the next step?
The next part of my process will be to do another 10 prints which will mean buying 10 more sheets of fabriano paper and getting my new improved dark green ink which should work better this time. will keep you updated shortly on this outcome.
Feel free to watch this short 5 minutes of detailed commentary showing my first printing process.
