Screen Print #2 'Down the Tubes' - Process & Production

I'd carried on developing this 3rd image, adding more bits here & there to fill the canvas up a bit and to hopefully make it a bit more interesting to look at, without making too jumbled, keeping main focus on the imagery in the centre of the frame. I experimented with different size halftones and line thickness swell, again to make the most of the limitations on the number of colours. It was also a test for myself to see how well i could execute all this with analogue techniques. Final results and separations below.

BLACK seperation layer

COLOUR separation layer

With my previous print ('whisky business' aka 'turkey times') i'd probably have to admit at making the halftone dots a bit too small and they hadn't transferred that well when it came to screen printing, and i came to the conclusion that it was because i'd prepared the image for print at full size(a3) whilst on-screen, so i was probably over compensating on the size and not wanting the dots to be too big when it came to printing my positives. I found that prepping the image for print at a4 meant that even if the dots were a bit on the small size on screen, when it came to blowing it all up to a3 to make my positives, then any halftones fonts that may have been on the small size originally would now be twice the size. A bit nerdy, and probably not very well explained, but basically do everything half the size it needs to be!

On-screen print mock-up

After printing out the two positives for this image and seeing the bigger dots, i already felt more confident that this session would be a more successful one. Had also remembered to print them off with corner crop marks, as i'd had issues with alignment on my last prints. Lots of small thing to remember in this game if you want to get top results, as I'm finding out the hard way.

The 2nd colour for this print is probably the only thing i was flexible about. I'm no master paint mixer by any stretch, but i wanted to aim for some sort of greeny-blue or bluey-green. Again, i wasn't too fussy about about the specifics, just along as didn't look like swimming pool water or sewage, then id be happy.

The Aqua-Turquoise-Teal spectrum i was aiming to land inside.

After a bit of blending i settled on a sort of halfway house between turquoise and teal.Maybe not a 'pingy' as i'd liked, but certainly didn't look like sewage.

'Turqueal' colour paint mixed and ready to go. 

My screens were exposed the previous afternoon, and even they looked good! What could possibly  go wrong?