So I tried my hand at screen printing. I decided to go as simple as possible with the process. I used the drawing/ screen filler method. (Basically, I drew a picture, traced my drawing onto the screen, and filled all the negative space with screen filler. Screen filler clogs all the holes in the screen and prevents ink from seeping through. In the image below the screen filler is a brownish color. The owl is not painted at all.)Lots of my students gave me some feedback as far as the design goes. I like the way the owl came out - not too girly. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I planned to make t-shirts for the boys at Sarah Beth's birthday party. It's also a good way to learn to use the screen print kit before my art students get a hold of it.
The instructions say to pre-wash the garment before screen printing, but I was ready with my supplies and didn't have a washer and dryer handy. I went ahead and printed one t-shirt with pretty good success. (See below.) I decided to go ahead and stop to pre-wash the rest of the t-shirts before printing the rest of them. When it was time to print again, things didn't turn out as nicely as they had the first go 'round. I didn't bother taking pictures of my 2 "disaster shirts". I ended up hand painting the bottom half of all the letters because they didn't print... on either shirt. I tried making more than one pass. That didn't work out so well either. There are some gray spots here and there from the ink sinking through the filler. I really haven't figured out what happened to the cut off letters.
Click here to see a tutorial that follows the same method, but with homemade materials. NOTE: Screen filler can be washed out and the screen can be reused. I'm not sure about Elmer's glue.
