THE BEATEN PATH
12
Silkscreening is a printing technique in which areas of a screen, comprised of woven mesh stretched on a frame, are selectively masked to create a stencil which forms a negative of the image to be printed. Ink is then pushed through the mesh onto the printing surface, creating a positive image. After isolating the colour, the chromist hand-mixes the colour by sight to match the original, rigorously accounting for many variables such as the change in ink colour when layered upon one another. One colour is printed at a time, so several screens are required to produce a multi-coloured image or design. Each print of a silkscreen edition must be handled and printed once for each colour. Although the term silkscreen derives from the material of the screen itself, the process is sometimes referred to as screen printing or serigraphy, and other materials including polyester mesh, nylon threads and even stainless steel can be used in the process. There are also different types of mesh size which will determine the outcome and look of the finished design on the material. The history of screen printing dates back more than 1,000 years to China during the Song Dynasty. It was first introduced to a Western audience in the late 1700s, but it was not until the start of the twentieth century that printers and their methods advanced. By the early 1960s, the practice was known amongst a select few, but it was a young ar tist named Andy Warhol whose work truly turned silkscreening into a widely recognised ar t form. Today, the practice is revered as a highly specialist collaboration between artist and master printer. THE SILKSCREEN PROCESS
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker