A little bit of screen printing

I have wanted to do some screen printing for years. I bought a kit, I bought a book, but I did nothing because I was too scared. Why scared? well I thought I wouldn't get nice results without doing it the the traditional way with photo emulsion and all that paraphernalia. In a recent college class I was proved wrong. You can get some very good results with the simplest of techniques:

Indirect - paper stencil

then you can reuse the cut outs of the stencil as your design

you can use the stencil in further design work

you can use an acetate stencil which washes out easily and can be reused again:

and then you make a monoprint with the inky stencil:

I then got a bit more confident and tried a direct stencil method by using some screen filler and painted the negative of one of my stencils for a bit of design work for my metre piece:

Then I abandoned the paint and ink and got to the root of why I have wanted to learn about screen printing:

Devoré!

In summary screen printing is here to stay even though it can be messy and smelly (if you are doing devoré) and uses ridiculous amounts of paint/ink/etching fluid. It does produce great results without too much skill required and covers large areas quickly.