Step one: Find a shirt that you want to use for the screen print. This will be your substrate or the product that is being printed on. For this demonstration, I am using an old tee-shirt but you don’t have to limit yourself to just tee-shirts. It’s possible to use screen printing on a variety of things, such as posters, cards or anything you want massed produced.
Step two: Creating your design is the essential part and I suggest for the first couple attempts to work with a design that is simply black and white, somewhat similar to a stencil. I’d suggest sketching out the design, then inking it with a nice fat tipped marker. You can also take it into an illustration program on the computer to vector and darken the lines in your design. Having solid black is essential for this next part I’m going to explain.
Step three: Getting your art work onto transparency paper. This isn’t as hard as you think, just go to a printing company and ask if they can print your image onto a transparency paper. You can also by the transparency paper yourself and print the image off of your jet print. But once you’ve got this, we can move on.
Step four: Alright, now that we have the shirt, the design and the transparency; it’s time to get your screen. A mesh screen is a tool used in screen printing that helps the inks we are going to be using, flow effectively and stay on your substrate. How it works is this, it has small holes in the screen, which is held by either a metal frame or a wooden frame, and the small holes help ink go through. All this will come together in our next step. You can find these in your local art supply store, and even make your own. But once you have this, please, let’s continue.
Step five: Now it’s time to get some photo emulsion to help you complete you’re following process. But a quick overview before we go further just to drop some knowledge on you guys. Basically it’s a liquid substance that takes in ultra light to help harden itself so that whatever area the photo emulsion was placed on, it will seal up, thus helping the ink go where you want it to go. It may sound confusing but I’ll go into further detail. Again you can find this at your local art supply store.
Step six: Ok, here is where we get a little dirty. Grab your emulsion, your transparency paper and your screen. With a squeegee or a clean paint brush spread the photo emulsion on the inside part of the screen. Once its all covered, place the transparency paper right on top, and if possible find a piece of glass that can hold it in place, but not necessary. This is the process where the photo emulsion will harden, but before this happens it has to be in the right lighting, since it hardens when light hits it. You can use a 150 watts light bulb found at home. I would recommend for a great burn, that you leave it about 12 inches for about 40 minutes. Once this is done your emulsion should have changed colors and the black lines that covered up the light from the bulb, should still be a little wet.
Step seven: We are getting closer! In this step, take your screen and rinse it out with cold water to get rid of the photo emulsion that didn’t get burned and that didn’t get stuck to your screen. So when all is rinsed off, you should have little openings where your design was placed.
Step eight: Alright, now it’s time to get even dirtier, so grab that acrylic paint (preferably black) and your squeegee. This is leading up to the finally of your print. So let’s keep this moving. Again all this can be found in your local art supply story.
Step nine: Get a flat surface, like a table, and place your tee-shirt nice a flat. Place your screen on top of the shirt and make sure that your design is aligned perfectly where you want it. You can tape it to the shirt so it won’t move but that’s optional. Now that it’s in place, from the top of the inside of your screen, squeeze out a bead of paint to from left to right in a clean matter. Then take your squeegee and stroke the paint in a downward motion only. Try to avoid gestures that get the paint everywhere, its best you stick to one motion so it looks cleaner when you take the screen off. I would advise doing some test prints. But once you have gotten the entire screen covered in paint, then that means your design should have successfully been transferred to your tee shirt. Remove slowly and enjoy. I would suggest let it dry, and maybe put it in the dryer for a couple of minutes just so that the paint can stay nicely secured.
Step ten? Put it on and enjoy it. Oh and also give yourself a round of applause for completing the process of screen printing a tee-shirt. Now go and show your friends. Who knows, they might want you to make some for them either way, enjoy.peace.
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