West Yorkshire Print Workshop - Upstairs

This is usually where you'd find me in the screen room upstairs at WYPW

It's here where I screen print my illustrations and artwork, mix colours and loose total track of time as I truly belief this room defies all laws of time,
infact time accelerates at such a speed that before you know it,
piff paff puff
and its time to pack up and go home!

So,

my usual day creating a print in this lovely room will begin with burning
my images onto the screens,you can see in the bottom right hand corner.

I divide the image I want to print into colour separations, above,

a black artwork for each colour.

Then I create a screen for each colour.

I do this by coating the screen in a light sensitive solution called Azacol,

this is then put into the dark cupboard to dry.

When this is dry it then goes on an all singing all dancing fancy machine called an exposure unit
with the colour separation artwork. ( hope you're following so far:))

The coated screen is exposed to ultra violet light
which is blocked by the artwork creating a stencil when washed
for you to squeegee the ink through!

phew!

Sounds more technical than it actually is, but enough of the technical stuff.

While the screens are drying I plan and mix colours ready to print

Once the colours are mixed and the screens are dry I can start printing the colour layers on the paper,
which develops like this...

Sketch of screen print,

1. medium grey blue

2. Light grey blue

3. white

4.Ochre

5. red orange

6. dark chocolate!

After each print of colour they go on a drying rack for twenty mins or so, 

the acrylic is fast drying so it's ready for its second layer of colour quite quickly.

This is me with chickens on the drying rack🐔

and here are some screen prints that I've produced at the wonderful WYPW

And I'm going to end this post with one of my favourite bits of the upstairs print room,
the colourful display of marigolds by the sink 👐

The next post I will show you how I print my monoprints in the downstairs print room....