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1. PREP THE SCREEN
Mix the photo emulsion as per the directions.
SARA: You can really see the fibers in this
silk — it looks really open — does that help
the printing process?
Coat the screen with photo emulsion, working fairly
quickly over a sink or surface you can get messy. KIRK: The tighter the weave of the silk, the better esolution you will get. Think of it like dpi (dpi =
It's OK to have indoor lights on during this process, dots per inch). If your design has lots of detail and
but keep out of direct sunlight. The emulsion needs you make it 72dpi in Photoshop, of course you’ll
to be applied evenly, so keep flipping the screen lose detail and it’ll look grainy. If you go to 150dpi,
over and squeegeeing until the emulsion is even on it will look twice as good. If your silk is cheap, chances are it’s less than 72dpi.
both sides. Any globs will cause uneven exposing To gain resolution, you will have to buy more
and will mess up your end result. The thicker the expensive silk, and in most cases, that means
emulsion is applied, the longer the screen will have stretching your own screen. I go the quick and dirty
to be exposed. route and use store-bought pre-stretched screens, which cost around $10 each for an 8x10. In using
these, though, I know that any wispy details in my
design may be compromised.
The screen needs to be completely dry in order
to expose it, and should be dried in a pitch-black
room. I dry my screen by resting the wood frame
on a couple of shoe boxes in the closet, so that the boxes, so as not to mess up the nicely applied emul-screen is parallel to and above the floor. This allows sion. You can place a fan (I use Vornado because they
the air to flow above and below the screen to help it are compact) next to the screen. Drying it this way
dry faster. Make sure that only the frame touches the takes 30 minutes to an hour, depending on humidity.
