I have long been interested in the ideas and process of screen printing.  I like the fact that it is such a simple process that can be done by basically anyone.  I love the manual-process aspect of it and the variations in quality that are associated with it.  Yet, for some reason I have (until now) been reluctant to even try screen printing.  I have had a small screen for over a year and, for lack of a better term, have been afraid to put an image on it.  I think it has to do with the permanent aspect of a screen.  That is to say, once an image is on it, that screen is used and done.  So I guess I just never wanted to waste a screen on just anything.  But finally I have talked myself into using it up and actually trying to screen print

The design I created is inspired from two things.  First is an old Walt Disney animation about skeletons dancing. check it out here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP1TzHbt7do The second source is from Tim Burton’s Corpse bride and specifically the musical sequence about the back story of the corpse bride. The final output is intended as a t-shirt and being a big fan of Disney and Burton, the whole design can be really seen as created just for me.    The purpose though is to just try out screen printing and perhaps learn some technique that I can use in future designs. So to create the piece, I drew the design by hand and then scanned it and recreated it in illustrator.  This allowed me to tweak the design and be able to create a repeating pattern (Adjust bone sizes and fix weird areas). You will notice that pieces of the finished piece are actually mirror images of the other side. I drew about half the skeleton then finished it off in Illustrator.  Again, this was to make sure everything lined up and worked as a pattern.

A challenge I had for this project was the size of the screen.  Being small, I was only able to fit one skeleton the screen.  This would mean that I would have to use the same screen multiple times on the same design.  I knew ink lift-back would occur but decided to figure it out when I got to that stage.  I printed the design out in black and white and taped it to the back of the screen.  Next I used screen filler and hand painted in the negative image of the screen.  I chose hand painting instead of photo emulsion because I already had screen filler (bought when I got the screen) and I hope would make it a bit rougher image.  Once dry, I used black ink on some extra paper I had laying around.  I can’t believe how easy this process is to do and actually is kind of fun.  After my first test I had to wash off the screen and go back to fill some more spots I had missed with the filler.  But after it was dry again I got a pretty cool image.  As for the repeating pattern, I solved liftback by wiping down the screen really fast with a damp paper towel. I am quite happy with the results but in the future, I am going to use bigger screens and photo emulsion to save time. For now though, I am happy wearing my dancing skeleton t-shirt.