Screenprinting

Screenprinting / serigraphy / silkscreeN

Printing using a frame covered in a fine taut mesh through which ink is forced onto paper (or other material) beneath. Areas of the screen are masked off using handmade/hand-drawn or photographic stencils to define an image. Ink is dragged over the stencil on the mesh using a long rubber blade called a squeegee.

The squeegee forces an even distribution of ink to pass through the open areas of the stencil and onto the paper/other material.

Multi-colour images are created by using a different screen with  a new stencil for each colour. The technique was popularized as an artists’ medium by American Pop artists Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein in the 1 960s, though the basic technique seems to date back to c500 BC in Japan.