Bonanza

• April 22nd, 2009 • 2 Comments • experiments, screen printing, supplies •

I really should post photos, but this project is in the one corner of the shop I primarily pile large, old paintings in. Not to mention the old cabinet that was on the wall when I moved in; it STILL needs to be ripped down so I can put up more wall shelves!

In any event, I finally built a proper screenprinting table, one suitable for printing t-shirts and odd-shaped items. This, in conjunction with a new laser printer (Shout-outs to all my relatives out there that gave me Amazon gift certificates for the past few holidays/birthdays!) have given me zero excuses to git my butt in gear and PRINT!

I’m particuarly excited about the prospect of paper lithography, a technique I learned a few years back. It only requires a toner-based printout, gum arabic, water and an oil-based ink. (Oh SURE it’s nice to have a litho press, but let’s just keep one press fund at a time, okay?) Surely when I’m off the screenprinting kick we’ll move on to fauxlitho and have a ball. (With pictures, gotta have pictures.)

My screen frame and coating methods have improved greatly, thus making for neater screens. However, up until recently I was still plagued with cleaning. Acetone is a perfect solvent for cured photo emulsion, but it’s nasty, expensive and non-water soluable. Bah. Bleach works great, but it’s so liquidy and slow! (Yes yes, you can point out I could use a pro remover, but I’m not made of money, dammit!) Enter Clorox Outdoor Bleach! It’s got sodium hypochlorite, sodium hydroxide (bleach and lye) and surfactants. Being thick and oozy, it stays where I put it on the screen and seems to have a higher concentration of bleach than regular household bleach. (The package is mysteriously silent on the ratios, as is the website. Hmm.) It scrubs up all foamy thus removing and de-greasing my screen all in one step. Did I mention it’s six bucks for 1.41 gallons? Hallelujah.

Incidentally, work at the ceramics shop has kept me busy busy, but I hope to post some nice photos of what I’ve been up to soon…