After Mary’s excellent introduction I demonstrated the practical business of setting up a screen on the bed, how to mix inks and how to print. I had already printed a two colours from a layered CMYK halftone. For my demo I used the magenta screen and showed the group how to register the layer using an acetate sheet and registration makers.
It was quite crowded around the screen but everyone was able to see and I gave a couple of the group a go at printing my image.
After this I set up the next bed with a screen which we had exposed with the ID photos we had for their ID badged. The photos were lined up in a grid making it an ideal layout for a small fold book. I asked everyone to print one off and they formed a que and off they went.
I kept an eye on them and helped them when necessary, but they did really well. They said I made it look easy to do but they instantly realised that it takes a lot of physical effort to make a good pull. They seemed very impressed with the process and especially with the immediacy of the print. its much quicker than wiping an intaglio plate!
After lunch Joe talked us through his photo-polymer relief process which he has used with great success on a recent project on the South Pacific island of Tonga. The unreliable English sunshine meant the that he and Sarah, our resourceful print technician, had to experiment with our exposure unit instead. They came up with a range of media that would work for a negative/positive exposure and Joe took us through the best of them.
The photo-sensitive plastic sheet is a material I had come across in Utah in 2009 as a less time consuming method for letterpress printing. It works really well at capturing detail and bold relief and we are going to see if we can all have a go next week and introduce it into our books.
