Process lead practice
The process that leads up to screen printing an image is wonderful. There are many steps that add a long prep time to the process. Once an image has been chosen & edited it can then be printed onto acetate followed by coating a screen, drying it, exposing an image onto the screen, washing the screen, drying it, preparing the screen, lining up the image, then pulling that squeegee. For a recent image that I printed this process was followed. However I printed one giant image that used 9 acetate sheets that had to be cut & stuck together then exposed across 2 of the largest screens in the studio, almost doubling the steps in the process. Following that the image was printed onto a single tarpaulin sheet. So the final pull of the squeegee across each screen, taking less than a minute was the result of around 2 hours prep. This process clearly lends itself to mass production, as I have explored before but for this test I just needed to do the process over everything else. The end result was not perfect or exhibition quality but was a good lesson in how I should proceed in printing onto tarpaulin.
