Screen Printing
Silkscreen, Famous Printmakers.
Visual Arts

Screen Printing: Type of Printmaking

Screen-printing (screenprinting, silkscreen, or serigraphy - from sericum, Latin for silk) is a twentieth century intaglio printmaking technique derived from traditional stencilling, itself one of the earliest forms of graphic art duplication. In stencil printing, a drawing or design is cut out of paper (or any thin, strong alternative material) and then printed by applying paint through the cut-out areas and onto the onto the desired medium, such as paper, board, fabric etc. Silk creen printing is merely a more complex type of stencilling. It was first developed about 1900 and first used in advertising, before being taken up by American Pop artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol.

The Basic Screen Printing Process

In silkscreen printing, the image is first drawn on a piece of paper or plastic, or captured in a photograph, then is cut out to form a stencil. Next, a fabric screen (originally made from silk) is stretched over a frame and the stencil is affixed to the screen. The screen is then placed over the desired substrate (eg. paper, glass, textile) and ink is then applied to top of the screen and spread across the screen, over the stencil and through the open mesh onto the substrate underneath. The ink is spread using a squeegee - a rubber blade usually the same width as the screen. Any number of colours can be used, although a sparate screen is required for each colour.

Film Images Used in Silkscreen Printing

Using modern technology with UV sensitive photo emulsions, images can be created on transparent film and then replicated exactly on a nylon screen coated with light sensitive (UV) emulsion. The latter is applied to the whole screen which is then overlaid with the film upon which the artist has drawn his design, and both are exposed to UV light. The light passes through the transparent film, except where the artist's design prevents it. On those parts of the screen exposed to the light, the emulsion hardens. When the screen is then washed, all the emulsion is removed except for the hardened areas, thus creating a stencil on the screen that exactly matches the design down to the smallest detail.

Famous Silkscreen Artists

These include Andy Warhol (1928-87) with his silk screen prints: Campbell's Soup Can on Shopping Bag (1966), Triple Elvis (1962), and Marilyn Monroe (167), among others; Robert Rauschenberg (b.1925) with his Retroactive II (1964); Ben Shahn, with his silkscreen print Pleiades (1960).

• For more about etching, engraving, lithography and screen printing in Ireland, see: Irish Art Guide

• How to Update This Mini Review of Screen Printing

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