Mono & Screen Printing

MONO PRINTING
In today's lesson (19th September) in class we conducted a couple of practical’s were we did two printing processes, mono printing and screen printing. Both techniques were different and one I found easier than the other.
What I did for the mono printing was to print out couple of pictures from our Identity folders in Pinterest accounts. Once I finished that, I prepared a transparent A4 size piece of plastic, black ink and a roller. Placing a bit of ink at the bottom of the plastic screen I used the roller to spread the black ink over the screen proportionally leaving the bottom where the ink was clear.


 The reason why this part was clear was because if there were too much ink it could be spread in that area. However if there weren't no space of a clear area, and there were too much ink, then it would be very hard to remove it. The clear space also gave us a place to hold when moving the screen. When I had finished rolling the ink, I was on the next step to doing the mono prints. I realized that I had just a bit more ink than I needed so what I did was I got a bit of paper and placed it on top of the screen and pressed above it. This would take the extra ink of the screen and it suitable for printing.
In order to do the mono printing, I placed a thin piece of paper on the plastic screen with my chosen picture above it. Carefully with a pencil, I drew over the lines of the picture and used my fingers for areas that were shaded in the picture.  It took me a couple of time to get the technique right. I kept putting my hand on top of the paper so when it was finished, the drawing wouldn't show up because the whole area would be black.



SCREEN PRINTING

Screen printing was probably the easiest one out of the two. What I did was in instead of using a picture from the internet, I was using a drawing that I had made of my name. In order not to use the only copy I had, I took a picture of it, uploaded it on the computer and then printed it out on paper. Using a small knife, I cut out the individual letters of my name and left the background.
Instead of using back ink, I used two colours, White and Blue to create a gradient. These two colours would be place next to each other to make it look like the Blue was fading out to White. I put the two colours on the plate and then used a special liquid to help make the paint thinner in order for it to go through the screen.
The screen was made up by a large frame which would be the same size and an A3, and a screen which was like a net but stretched over the Frame. I placed about two or three newspapers under the picture that I cut out so it could reach the surface of the screen and then put the Screen on top of it. In between the temple and the newspaper, I put a clear piece of paper. This was where I wanted the print to come out on. I used a paint brush to put the paint over the screen and then used a ‘squeeze’ to press the paint through the screen and then on to the paper. I did this a couple of time because the gradient didn’t show up. I had to apply more paint of both colours. sometime the print would be too faint.