Screen Prints

A screen print is made by pressing ink through a mesh screen onto a flat surface below. The ink only passes through the designated image area; the rest of the screen is coated with a substance that blocks the ink. Silkscreen is the most common form of screen-printing and is so named because the fine mesh, stretched onto a frame, was originally made of silk. Today, polyester is a more common material. There are several ways of creating a silkscreen, the most common of which involves coating the screen with a photosensitive emulsion. The opaque design is placed on top of the screen and the two layers are exposed to light. The emulsion will easily wash out of the image area, while the rest will harden and render the screen impermeable. Less commonly, an artist can paint out the negative space with glue. It is possible to get finer detail using the photo emulsion method. To print the image, the artist lines up the screen on top of the paper or other support, floods the screen with ink, and uses a squeegee or blade to pull the ink across the entire surface of the screen. For prints of multiple colors, a separate screen is made for each color. The screens are carefully registered on top of each support before the color is printed. Large editions of screen prints can be created fairly easily, making the process valuable for many commercial applications like posters and t-shirts.

Screen prints have a distinctive aesthetic of flat, graphic layers of color. Andy Warhol is credited with popularizing the screen print as a fine art medium. Many of his iconic images, including portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, were made as screen prints. Other contemporary artists who have made screen prints are Ryan McGinness, Takashi Murakami, Sarah Lucas, and Keith Haring.