Ok, well the full events and results of this day are more or less the same as my previous venture into the screen printing world, so refer back to that post if you will. But in brief (ish) here are the key disaster points:
• Enter Studio @8:50
• Complete 1st colour layer with pleasing results on the hole. Haltones are printing out clearly and am happy with the shade of blue/green i whipped up. Even coverage.Didn't forget to tape over crop marks. Nice atmos all round.
• Enter 2nd layer.
• Paint is pulling uneven,patchy & streaky.
• Kodatrace has dents in it which is causing problems with registration.
• I trim end of Kodatrace off to remove dented area, not taking into consideration that now the screen image and the image printed on the kodatrace will now be a country mile off, but i'm there swearing at myself wondering what is going on?
• Finally realise what I've done, clean off kodatrace, re-pull onto on it do give me a new guide. All the time the the black paint is drying on the screen making it impossible for me to better the results.
• I stop before i run out of good 1st colour layer sheets to print over, i leave myself 4 attempts to get a decent print to submit. I go and clean off the back off the screen and go and have a think & a swear.Considered scanning them in and correcting them with Photoshop.
• I come back an hour later with the plan to make the most of the last remaining green prints. I also plan to print over the streaky prints,providing i can line them up accurately.
• That fails, due to slight ,unseen bump at the taped down end of the Kodatrace, which is throwing the registration out even though I'm initially lining it up perfectly. So there's double lines over the prints. Interesting, but very wrong results.
• The last 4 goo green prints remain. They are swiftly ruined when black paint comes out streaky and patchy and god awful again, and i can feel it getting tacky and hard to pull.It's clearly drying out again, but I've no clue what i've been doing wrong.
• Had a little roll around & cry on the floor.
• I have an hour left before kicking out time, and no good prints left. Lyndon suggests cleaning off the black, again, and doing the colour layer then the black layer simultaneously without cleaning off the screen in-between. I go to get more nice paper, i now have 6 more chances to get it right.
• Try to make same shade of green/blue using salvaged paint.I don't quite manage it. This one's a bit pale and more on the green side, leaning dangerously towards looking like sewage.
• Was using a tiny squeegee so i didn't get paint all over side of the screen where the black layer needed to be. Hence some parts of green layers are missing bits at the sides. It ws always a risk, but they were coming ok, mostly.
• Straight over to the black side. I'd gone though my dictionary of swear words so this needed to work…and it only bloody did! Its was all down to one thing - the direction i was flooding the screen.That's all it took. Id been flooding the screen away from me all this time, and was getting a rubbish among of paint on the screen,as i always thought you had to flood the screen in the opposite direction to what you pull onto your paper. What a wally.
• Had a little roll around & cry on the floor.
•All was good with the world. Registraiton still wasnt as tight as id liked, but to come out of today with anything submittable was minor miracle.
• 16:35 exit stuidio (kicked out).It felt like id been in there all day, because I HAD.I leave a mostly broken man, but one who had made good the massive wrongs in his days work and with a print or two worthy of submission.
• Back on Monday for more..!
Decided to print them simultaneously rather than print one colour, clean the screen, wait for it to dry then set everything all up again for the 2nd colour. Saved so much time, and knocked these last lot out just as as the studio was locking up for the day. Not sure why i didn't think of this before, Lyndon is a life saver.
• Enter Studio @8:50
• Complete 1st colour layer with pleasing results on the hole. Haltones are printing out clearly and am happy with the shade of blue/green i whipped up. Even coverage.Didn't forget to tape over crop marks. Nice atmos all round.
• Enter 2nd layer.
• Paint is pulling uneven,patchy & streaky.
• Kodatrace has dents in it which is causing problems with registration.
• I trim end of Kodatrace off to remove dented area, not taking into consideration that now the screen image and the image printed on the kodatrace will now be a country mile off, but i'm there swearing at myself wondering what is going on?
• Finally realise what I've done, clean off kodatrace, re-pull onto on it do give me a new guide. All the time the the black paint is drying on the screen making it impossible for me to better the results.
• I stop before i run out of good 1st colour layer sheets to print over, i leave myself 4 attempts to get a decent print to submit. I go and clean off the back off the screen and go and have a think & a swear.Considered scanning them in and correcting them with Photoshop.
• I come back an hour later with the plan to make the most of the last remaining green prints. I also plan to print over the streaky prints,providing i can line them up accurately.
• That fails, due to slight ,unseen bump at the taped down end of the Kodatrace, which is throwing the registration out even though I'm initially lining it up perfectly. So there's double lines over the prints. Interesting, but very wrong results.
• The last 4 goo green prints remain. They are swiftly ruined when black paint comes out streaky and patchy and god awful again, and i can feel it getting tacky and hard to pull.It's clearly drying out again, but I've no clue what i've been doing wrong.
• Had a little roll around & cry on the floor.
• I have an hour left before kicking out time, and no good prints left. Lyndon suggests cleaning off the black, again, and doing the colour layer then the black layer simultaneously without cleaning off the screen in-between. I go to get more nice paper, i now have 6 more chances to get it right.
• Try to make same shade of green/blue using salvaged paint.I don't quite manage it. This one's a bit pale and more on the green side, leaning dangerously towards looking like sewage.
• Was using a tiny squeegee so i didn't get paint all over side of the screen where the black layer needed to be. Hence some parts of green layers are missing bits at the sides. It ws always a risk, but they were coming ok, mostly.
• Straight over to the black side. I'd gone though my dictionary of swear words so this needed to work…and it only bloody did! Its was all down to one thing - the direction i was flooding the screen.That's all it took. Id been flooding the screen away from me all this time, and was getting a rubbish among of paint on the screen,as i always thought you had to flood the screen in the opposite direction to what you pull onto your paper. What a wally.
• Had a little roll around & cry on the floor.
•All was good with the world. Registraiton still wasnt as tight as id liked, but to come out of today with anything submittable was minor miracle.
• 16:35 exit stuidio (kicked out).It felt like id been in there all day, because I HAD.I leave a mostly broken man, but one who had made good the massive wrongs in his days work and with a print or two worthy of submission.
• Back on Monday for more..!
MUCH SHORTER SUMMARY:
It started well - things went wrong - more things went wrong - no more things could go wrong - I stopped - I started again - same things went wrong - I stopped - i altered one single thing with my technique - things started looking up - it ended well.
One colour pull, intended for scanning &
emergency PS intervention. Not required in the end
At long, long,long last i'd conquered my black paint pulling disability.
Registrations was a bit off, but not too noticeable.
Annoying white spec on the skull eye of all the good prints, caused by paint that hadn't been fully removed from washing it after the earlier pulling session. I even noticed before i tried printing but thought to my self 'naah, that won't effect it". One for the lesson book - it does effect it. Still i didn't let it dampen my breakthrough success,much.
With all the rookie mistakes out of the way, i look forward to a much shorter blog entry for my next print sessions.
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