Screen Printing Today
The Basics

Andy MacDougall's Essential New Book
  

 

Here in Squeegeeville is where our master
screenprinter and author finds himself most days...

 



but it's here, frightening the wildlife, where he really wants to be.

Andy MacDougall, the Thinking Man's Screen Printer

We discovered Andy MacDougall five years ago on a printmaking discussion list. He was a commercial-screen-printer-turned-art-printer (and a lot of other interesting things we discover later...) with frank and sensible opinions and, best of all, an amusing way of presenting them. In a world increasingly populated by amorphous suits and worse, Andy was a refreshing change. Still is. Now, with the help of his daughter, Naomi, he has brought out his long-awaited screen-printing manual and, not surprisingly, it's felicitously clear, straightforward and convincing. One puts the book down with the conviction that he should head out to a hardware store and get the materials to put together a small homemade vacuum press. The book can be purchased online from DieselFuel in the U.S.A. or directly from Andy in Canada. Click here to go to a PDF document with prices and discounts.


The Interview

Why this book? Why now?

Screen Printing Today (SPT) started in 1988 as a short training manual for new employees at our commercial screenprinting shop. We finally gave up hiring 'experienced screenprinters' (an oxymoron in many people's opinion in the industry in Canada...a string of 'printmaking majors' from the local art schools or supposedly skilled workers answering the ads who sniffed a few too many solvents...) and decided to train from scratch, so we needed something to explain the steps in practical terms to people who knew nothing about the process. There was nothing available, so I started writing out the steps as I understood them and as we practiced them in our screenprinting shop. I've been constantly adding to it and self publishing (read photocopying) different versions through the ensuing years, mostly for workshops and training courses that we now provide. But the older versions weren't very well designed, and the photos, which are key to understanding a lot of the process steps, looked terrible.

This past year our daughter, Naomi, was in her third year of graphic design and allowed to take on the redesign of the book for a course credit, and earn some money from me for school. It didn't hurt that her professor was also the Art Director for a major Canadian book publisher, and gave her encouragement and advice! This was the spark to do a complete rewrite and redesign, plus the fact we could now print the entire book in short run high resolution digital, so it looked like a real book, perfect bound, with a color cover. We didn't have that technology even five years ago. She did an excellent job, and relished the payback opportunities ordering her old dad to rewrite and rephotograph whole chapters. I raised a perfectionist.


Young people seem particularily interested in screenprinting. This is at
Trinity Western University. The co-ordinator, with a degree in printmaking,
commented she learned more in one day here than in three years at school.


Who will buy this book, students, artists, art teachers, schools, would-be screen print entrepreneurs, or what?

All of the above. I've got plant engineers in China who use it, too.
There is such a range of people wanting to know more about the basics of modern screenprinting, and not much material out there for them. There seemed to be two types of books available - either extremely outdated 'low tech' texts which might have been relevant in 1930 and are entirely focused on hand drawn printing on paper, or a few books that are so technical in nature they lose the reader on page two. This technical side of screenprinting seems to overwhelm the beginner, or get completely ignored in fine art printmaking. I've tried to place SPT in the middle, to be practical, yet show the modern applications and methods that make it a lot more foolproof and a lot easier to get controlled results. I think they call it mastering the medium? So the student who is starting out can get a lot out of it, artists who want to try screenprinting or are already using it will love it - I've got a whole chapter on waterbased printing, and lots of info on different techniques they might want to try, like printing blends, or using digitally-output films with stochastic dots to expand their artistic range.

Of all the places I would like to see this book, the most important would be in the hands of art teachers in schools. Screenprinting is so ingrained in youth culture (think CDs, posters, stickers, t-shirts, snowboards, skateboards, and almost every electronic gadget and appliance in existence) and so easy to set up and do, the opportunity to bridge the knowledge gap in young people between making a design on a computer or a piece of paper, and then moving that image onto something - whether it's an art print or bolt of cloth or the front of a stereo or the printed circuitry inside that makes the damn thing work - that's the most important thing. We are dumbing people down with the idea all print will be digital, or that things are not made 'here' anymore, only in some factory in China, our only purpose in the western world to purchase crap at Walmart. Printed crap mind you. I want people to get into this most amazing printing process so they can experience the thrill of saying -"I made that!"

 

World Printmakers is a printmakers' site. What does your new book have to offer fine art printmakers? Do you expect to seduce some of our etchers over to the squeegee? Why should they do that?

Well, the opportunity to get totally slimed in gallons of colorful ink
is one of the major attractions... Actually, there's quite a lot of info that will help art printers. I've been printing art prints since 1985, and the major difference we were always able to provide artists was the use of technology and technique learned from the commercial side of screenprinting to get better results on the art side. Artists can gain consistency and more control of the medium by learning and implementing some of the simpler techniques demonstrated in the book.

A wider variety of effects and styles, the ability to use digital processing to produce separations and films, tricks for printing finer detail, information on specialty inks or using the process to work on nonstandard materials such as fabric, acrylic, metal and glass....these are all things that can be gleaned from SPT. Etching and most of the other print techniques used to make art are pretty one dimensional compared to the range of creative opportunities and materials to image on that screenprinting gives the artist. I think this is a key differentiation about screenprinting - most of the other art printing techniques are limited to paper. Screenprinting will allow you to lay an image almost anywhere on anything. It's faster once you are printing. And color - there's still nothing as bright and bold as a layer of screen ink on paper.


Maureen, our printmaker in residence, does the occasional screen print. She goes to our local Andy MacDougall, who's called "Antonio Marcos." She does the original and the separations, goes to his shop and together they knock out the prints. Thing is, this "local" screenprint guy recently moved 1,000 km. (600 miles) away. Will Screen Printing Today, The Basics, enable Maureen and others like her to do it all themselves. That is to say, most everybody sends their screen printing jobs OUT; what's the advantage of doing it IN? Getting ink all over your body? How much space is required for the basic setup?

Well, the ink on the body is the big attraction as I mentioned earlier. Getting naked and then slimed in ink is something most people would rather do in the privacy of their own studio, so yeah, I guess that's the biggest advantage of 'doing it IN'....seriously, it's way cheaper to do it yourself.The biggest advantage of doing it 'out' is it keeps squeegee draggers like me and Antonio out of the bars during the day and puts food on the table for our families.

The most creative print artists I've worked with have put the time in doing their own prints at some point, and through that have learned the basic cause and effect that goes on in screenprinting, some of the unique characteristics of the medium, what works, what doesn't. That allows them to really create some interesting work, much better than someone creating an image and just wanting a reproduction of the original. A limited edition screenprint by it's very nature will never be an exact reproduction, it will be original unto itself. The best ones evolve over the life of the print run. For that to happen, the artist needs to be intimately involved in the printing process. Get a little ink on their hands or other body parts.

Screenprinting is very do-it-yourself at a basic level. You can do prints on your kitchen table if you are really pressed for space - there's a plan set for a home built portable vacuum table that will set up in about five minutes and knock down and store in a closet. So an artist could be running smaller prints fairly cheaply. I explain how to burn screens using the sun, and if you have access to a hose and a sprayer and a dark closet you can make photostencils - with a squeegee and some ink you can be printing. It's when you start to print big you start accumulating bigger toys and pro equipment and end up with a full-blown dedicated screenprinting studio.




Enchanted Garden by Aikeng Chen. This print
is an example of Yunan Style painting from
China, although it looks like something from Indonesia. All the seps for this were painted
by hand on clear overlays by the artist. More detailed prints may have up to 100 screens.

 

 

 

 


Here is a recent print by Andy Everson, a
local first nations artist. He sold out the entire
edition in two days.

 

 

 

 

 


Bella Bull by George Littlechild. The base of
this print was done using process color, and
then the artist took the work in progress
and started creating overlays right on the
print, which we converted to screens and
added to the edition.

 

 

 

 

 

 


Lion of St Mark by Gayle Sams. One of
the trickiest prints I've done, this has a
very thin black outline around everything,
so the colors must trap perfectly under
a one-point rule.

 

 

 

I built in a large bay window so we can use the sun to expose
large screens with a rotating vacuum frame. I use a light integrator
to measure the exposures, this is fast and energy efficient.

 

Screenprinting is for everyone. This is
from a course for native artists in the
Yukon. Dwayne Johnston didn't let his wheelchair hold him back from printing. Dwayne is using one of the homemade
vacuum presses which can be put
together simply and inexpensively
from the plans published in Andy's book.

 

 

 

 



New Doors Baja by Ann Popperwell.
This print combines the advantages
of printing four-color process but using stochastic dots, which gives it a soft
grainy texture. We added flat colors
and a blended sky once the process
colors were down to enhance the print.

What's the cost of the materials one needs to get started?
Bare bones, about Canadian $250-300 (179-215 euros or US$216-$260). You would end up with enough ink and emulsion to print a bunch of different small editions, and a screen and squeegee and press that would last you for hundreds or thousands more. As you add more screens and inks to your inventory, the cost starts to go up. Larger size prints and longer runs require bigger equipment, but by that point you will be so rich from print sales it just won't matter.

How much time does it take the average duffer to produce a perfect screen print?
Once a person does it a bit, and isn't afraid to be critical and analytical and modify their techniques, it's fairly easy to get good
results. My five-year-old grandson can pull a print -that's him in the first chapter - my daughter was running a semi automatic press at age 10. It is a cumulative skill, though. And I have yet to pull a 'perfect print.' I'm still learning every time I print. We just had a workshop this weekend, none of the people had printed before.


By the end of the first day they had coated screens, created some art and films, and exposed and washed out the screens. We printed a few different designs the next day on paper and on cloth. But for them to really 'get it' they have to practice, to do lots of short runs and play with the process. Paper is cheap. I'm a big believer in doing small editions, both by size and by number. Try as many different images as you can, you learn way more by doing that than by trying to print hundreds of one image in a large format. Not for your first prints, anyway.


What percentage of time spent screen printing is devoted to cleaning up the gunk?
You can spend a lot of time cleaning up messes, or you can put a little work in at the start of the run which will minimize cleanup. I can clean up the ink, screen, squeegees, and stir sticks in about 5 minutes after a run. I spend longer mixing ink than cleaning up. Reclaiming screens is a different matter - that's about 10 minutes per screen, but you get a fresh mesh ready for another stencil. Coating takes about two minutes. An exposure takes a few minutes, the washout of the stencil a few more. Once you are printing, depending on the size, you can run at speeds of 100/hour up to 300-400/hour on some jobs...

Continued here...


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