Last week I took a screen printing class at NYC Resistor, a lovely hackerspace in Brooklyn.
It was their first time teaching this class, and fittingly they taught a screen printing technique that was new to me!
We were asked to bring in a vector art file. I really let myself get in my head about art for previous screen printing classes, so this time I vowed to do the first dumb idea that made me laugh. I was inspired by a recent delightful discovery in my Monday night gaming group and spent a half hour goofing on it in Inkscape.
Enough talk. Here are some process photos! (with more talk as captions)
It starts with cutting our digital design into a sheet of vinyl. Here's NYC Resistor's vinyl cutter.Next, pick out the parts of the vinyl you want to see in the final design. It's mirrored here but will be flipped for the final design.
Next, apply the vinyl to the bottom of the frame. I used transfer tape for this and it was tedious and painstaking work! Take your time on this step!!Vinyl applied to the bottom of the screen, as seen through the top of the screen. This is how the design will appear on the finished work. Some duct tape is used to cover over the parts of the screen not covered by the vinyl. You can see the design says "Practis free cactis" alongside a cartoon potted cactus.
Our hosts Woody and Mean Gene helped align and mount our screens to the press.Woody applied a line of ink.
Here's the shirt on the platen after pulling the squeegee twice. Brown ink shining on a purple t-shirt. Looks good!We dried the (water-based) ink with a few passes of a heat gun for travel.
Here it is at home the next day. I heat-set the ink more permanently with an iron on high with a piece of parchment paper between.
And here it is after washing! I tried to match the stoic look of the cactus. 🌵
Many thanks to NYC Resistor and our instructors Woody and Mean Gene.
Thanks also to the other folks in the class, who were fun and chill. Their designs game out great, but that's their business.
I look forward to doing some more screen printing at a future NYC Resistor craft night!
This week I finished up a fun and challenging screen printing class at the Gowanus Print Lab!
Tucked away in the giant maze of brick buildings that is Brooklyn's Industry City, Gowanus Print lab is a small space, mightily equipped for paper and fabric screen printing projects.
Our instructor (and the proprietor) Todd took me and three other students through four 3-hour sessions: a hands-on instruction session introducing the basics of screen printing on apparel, an open apparel-printing lab where we could bring our own project of up to about 30 pieces, an instruction session on two-color paper printing (featuring our own designs), and a final do-what-you-want lab with the option to do a single-screen apparel run or up to three screens for a paper project.
I consider myself a person with little in the way of art skills, so with three opportunities to design basically whatever I wanted, I struggled a lot with anxiety and trying to push various software to turn half-imagined ideas into simple designs. I also had an "A-student mentality" kick in, driving me to maximize each session, which led to way more angst about deciding what to make than necessary. 🫠
Anyway, here are some photos of my finished projects!
Eternal Caturday shirt featuring a spiral of Lolly cats surrounding a large image of her making big owl eyes. In the background, actual Lolly sits on the floor making big owl eyes.
A two-color blue and yellow poster print of Lennon in an homage to the iconic three-wolf-moon design.
The Eternal Caturday spiral design as a three-color paper print. Black text and Lolly face, with alternating red and green cat silhouettes for the spiral.
I feel like the class gave a good foundation on the physical processes involved in screen printing. It's a lot of steps, but they're all about using careful prep to make things easier when it's time to start pulling the squeegee and churning out prints.
In terms of moving forward, I'd say the biggest thing I need to work on is a design practice - regularly pushing my skills with design software techniques. I'm in a bit of a negative cycle of having vague ideas combined with not enough skills to quickly sketch them out. I learned some new techniques in Inkscape (soo good for layout!) and the GIMP (newsprint filter and color managment!) but need to challenge myself to improve.
That said, I also need, uh, facilities?? A home setup feels pretty far out of reach given limited space and the potential for mess. I have a couple of places to try (textile arts center and Manhattan Graphics Center (when they're done moving to Brooklyn lol) and look forward to posting future projects if and when I try it out.
A fun thing that I feel is solved is where to get stuff (particularly, apparel) to print on! Todd pointed us to Suneco Tees, which has really great prices on t-shirts, and the folks there were super nice and able to quickly grab what I needed, rather than let me waste everyone's time trying to hunt things down myself. 😅
Some stuff I'd like to try in the future includes transparent ink printing with color mixing (just to learn the technique), as well as making short apparel runs with home-made logos for all the silly things that I like!
Many many many thanks to Amy for putting this on my radar and encouraging me through the class, staying excited about ideas even as my anxiety was spiraling, and helping me put together lists of family and friends who would happily accept and maybe even wear the results. Oh, and for shipping out a bunch of shirts!!!
Thanks for reading this far! Your reward is a bunch of random process photos!
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