Photo Screen printing at Hot Bed Press

Currently I'm in the midst of a 5 week screen printing course (one evening a week) at Hot Bed Press in Salford. I really didn't know what to expect but Mandy our tutor is absolutely brilliant, really patient and clearly very enthusiastic about screen printing. So far we have approached it using both stencils and by exposing screens and although it can get quite technical and there is a lot to remember I am determined to get really good at it as the results are just so satisfying. Below are some of my outcomes which vary in quality but which also have a lo-fi feel which I appreciate and think is rather appropriate for a gig poster.

Original Photoshop image of Beth Ditto of The Gossip that I traced and made into a stencil (below)

The resulting single-colour print, one of the better ones (below)

Adding another colour brings with it inevitable complications however when your registration goes awry (below) it can actually look rather good.

Spiritualized poster turned into a two-colour screen print (below). The registration on the cloud was particularly tricky.

Original poster for Silversun Pickups (below).

And resulting print (below). This one turned out to be my nemesis as it didn't seem to matter how hard I tried I was always missing some of the finer detail. Mandy assured me that it is possible to produce very fine prints using a screen but that possibly some of the photographic emulsion may have hardened on the screen and was blocking it. There was nothing else to do but to start from scratch and expose the screen again. Unfortunately however, the same happened again which meant that it must have been a fault of the original photocopy (not dark enough).

Feeling a bit defeated I decided that this poster may just have to remain as a digital image instead. I have tried (below) to create a similar screen printed look using Photoshop.

Barcelona

Just back from a quick trip to Barcelona. Inspiring as ever, Gaudi, Miro, Picasso and of course the endless graffiti and flypostering that can be seen down the backstreets and walkways. Bearing in mind I already have hundreds of similar photographs I tried not to get carried away, however I can't help but stop and stare every time I pass a particularly lovely arrangement of torn posters and neon lettering, each composition framed within a doorway or shuttered window. It made me think a lot about my new project and whether it might be interesting to post some of my posters in public spaces and return to them once they have been pasted over and battered by the weather.