Screen printing is a method of custom printing shirts and other garments. Some artists refer to it as silk screening. Any design can be printed, in any color and in any font on any kind of garment or bag.
The design is created by hand or by computer as an Illustrator file. If it is created by hand, it will be scanned into the computer and saved as an Illustrator file. Then the design is formatted to the appropriate size and printed out in black ink on a special kind of film. This film feels and looks like a transparency, so the areas without black ink are clear. If the design is more than one color, a film is needed for each color.
The screen is a large metal or wood frame similar to a window screen, but the mesh is much finer and the spaces between the mesh are much smaller. Some artists use silk mesh which is when it would be called silk screening, but most commercial printers use a fine metal mesh. This mesh is coated with emulsion which is like a thin gel.
The printed film is then placed on the screen and the screen is exposed to light which hardens the gel that is not covered by the black print. The parts of the gel protected by the black print remain soft and, using water spray, those soft parts of the gel are removed.
The screen is placed on the press and ink is forced through the mesh onto the garment. The ink only passes through the parts of the mesh not coated with gel, those are the parts that match the design.
The garment is then passed through a belt dryer and the heat of the dryer sets the ink.
When we set up the shop, Peter attended a training class sponsored by Ryonet Corporation to learn these techniques.