Screen Printing with Paper Stencils

Regina Woodard International School of Myanmar contact queenreginamarie@gmail.com

For this project you will need

A silk screen masked off to A4 size and a squeegee

Primary colors of textile ink- I prefer Versatex-

it’s non-toxic and not smelly. Magenta, Sky Blue and Yellow

mix into fantastically bright secondary colors.

You will also need at least four copies

of the image that you want to print

Step one: Make a plan

•Use primary & secondary

colors + brown

•Don’t worry too much about

your plan, you’ll have to change

it as you go

Step Two:

Cut out a stencil for everything that

you want to be blue, purple, green and brown.

Label this your blue stencil

Make a “bridge” where parts of the stencil

might fall out

Notice that you can use masking tape to

fix errors

Cut out a second stencil for everything that you want

to be red, orange, purple and brown.

You can cut the stencils directly out of

a xeroxed copy. This picture shows

the back of the copy.

Cut out a final stencil for everything

that will be yellow, orange,

green and brown

Step Three: Print

After you print the first color,

align the stencil for the next color

right onto the fabric.

It helps to make register marks on two corners

when you begin.

Set the screen on top of the fabric and stencils,

First load the screen by gently dragging the ink

across the screen with your squeegee.

Then press and drag the squeegee across to push

the ink through the screen into the fabric

Wow!

How do you get so many colors with only

three stencils?

That mystery is called color separation.

Check back on your first plan and see it

you had to adjust as you went?

Cut Stencils

Print Stencils

Help each other.

Screen printing can be messy.

This student finished with the primary colors and is going to finish with a

fourth stencil using black ink.

Remember, it’s process over product. Even if you don’t line up everything

perfectly, it can still create a nice effect.

This student kept his design

simple, using only magenta, yellow and black with just little color

mixing.

This student used all three

primaries, plus black

to create some variation.

Things to remember

•Bridge areas of stencil that might fall out.

•Register the first stencil so it’s easy to line up the

others.

•More is only more: too much ink will make your

paper stencil soggy.

•Heat set your image according to the

instructions on your ink.

Happy Art

Making !!! Please share

what you create !

ARARTE.ning.com