Hello all,

Things have been busy for the Bureau with the launch of The Ink Initiative. This has been an exciting venture for us and a learning experience to say the least. I love screen printing and if I had my way, it is what I would be doing everyday all day. Having said that, I will have to admit that it can also be a very frustrating process. There are so many important steps that need to happen between the initial design phase and the final finished product. Each one of these steps provides a high chance of something going wrong that can either slow down the process or halt it altogether. This is just a fact that I have come to accept and try to deal with because I believe the beauty of the finished print will always trump the difficulties of producing it.

We have received numerous emails from people who enjoy the behind the scenes photos of our process. Many have asked for video tutorials and we have plans to do a some in the future, but right now we just don’t have the time and the necessary resources to put it together the way I would like.  So for the time being, I will continue to post some photos and information on the our  ever evolving process.

Shown below is a sneek peek of our latest print, “Go suck on a Shutupsicle” which was originally designed for the Bureau’s “Superman vs. Darth Vader” exhibit. For this print, we included some new techniques and equipment to help streamline the process and to produce more efficient runs. Well… in theory that was the plan. We hit more snags than I though we would but we also encountered some minor successes as well. So here is a day in the life of a test print.

This is a shot of two of the new four screens we just got in. One of the problems we were encountered early on in this venture was the inconstancy in shooting the positives (burning the screens). Often the exposure time would greatly vary from screen to screen and either the stencil would just wash away completely or not burn all the desired details. Part of the problem was that the artwork was too large to print out here in the studio. The first attempt at solving this involved buying a b/w laser printer and printing out the artwork onto 8.5″x 11″ transparencies and then cutting and tiling them together. The results of this were mixed and often we would have to double up each transparency to get the black ink dark enough. This was extremely difficult when it came to matching up fine details or halftones.

The solution to this was to find a service bureau that could print out the film positives and a decent cost and then to upgrade from a 200 mesh screen to the yellow 305 mesh, which kick some serious ass! The higher mesh count really lets us get fine detail in our prints and the professionally produced film positives have made the exposure portion one of the easiest steps in the process. (although we have had to deal with bulbs burning out in the middle of a shooting a screen but hopefully we have that solved now…)

One of the most important steps in this process is choosing the right music. Our rule is only jazz and only jazz on vinyl. Usually we will listen to 4 or five albums during the course of a print. For this print I selected some Count Basie, Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery, Gene Ammons and of course…Huge Masekela.

Another important step is choosing the right refreshment. Mmmmmmm, Strongbow.

One of the new techniques we are using is pretreating the screens with a 50-50 mixture of H20 and 409. Apparently, the stencils on the screen will absorb H20, so if you don’t pretreat the screen before you flood it with ink, the stencil will suck up the H20 from the ink causing it to dry quicker on the screen, thus becoming a royal pain in the ass. We also add small strips of a sponge like material to the bottom of the screen. This acts like a small spring to keep the screen “off contact” and keep ink from oozing through the screen and leaving marks on the prints.

Here is the latest badass color mixed by Jenn, “Grey Matters”…yes, yes it does.

We try to mix our own unique colors whenever possible and Jenn does an outstanding job of getting the colors to match the initial comp. Unfortunately, mixing our own inks has come at a price. We have followed all the mixing guidlines to the letter. We have added extender and retarder. Everything should be fine but this one area that has caused us considerable amount of stress. For some reason, custom mixed ink dries and clogs on the screen 90% more than ink straight out of the jar. We have adjusted the amount of extender / retarder and even tried adding a little H20 but nothing seems to help. Most inks we can get a couple of prints down before we have to re-flood the screens. Sometimes the clogging is so bad that we have to wipe down the screen with water. This takes time and more test prints.

At this point we don’t have a solution. I think an additional factor to this problem might be the amount of humidity in the room. Right now we can not afford a dehumidifier, so all we can do is fight the ink and hope for the best. I have to admit this takes some of the joy out of the process because while we love to use custom inks it ensures that there is going to problems and often longer drying times between screens.

Another problem that occurs with each print is getting a good tight and consistent registration. I have to admit this problem has me stumped. Some prints, we haven’t had an issue, while others have been a complete nightmare. Jenn has pointed out that it doesn’t help that most of my designs have a vintage look and feel and I mis-register the colors on the original designs on purpose. Over the course of the last few posters, we thought we had identified the problem(loose clamps, ineffective tape registration, hand cut paper variations and so forth) but for some reason it still is a problem.

For this run we decided to incorporate two new techniques. The first is a method that I have seen lots of other screen printers use which involves printing the screen onto a large piece of acetate and then use that to register the screen. I like this method more in theory than in execution. I found it to be a little bulky and cumbersome, not to mention that if a screen has a large spread of ink, it tends to smear and glob on the acetate. I think I am going to go back to my old method. I feel like it yielded better results. Who knows, maybe I will explore this technique at a later time.

The second technique we decided to try was the use of these registration tabs instead of masking tape registration guides. I love these tabs! They are just as easy to put down as tape and they do a phenomenal job of locking the paper into place. I really felt like these tabs who be the answer to all of our registration problems but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case…at least for this test run. Out of the 15 or so prints we did, only about 6 were registered pretty tight. Now, I did notice that we had a slight loose clamp issue again and I am hoping that was the cause for the problem but I can’t say for sure until we do another run. This problem is the one that frustrates me the most but I am sure that we will find a solution to it in the near future. For now it is simply just trial and error….(and a whole lot of swearing)

Here is a closer look at the registration of the third color (the orange). The problem with this run came from the first color(the yellow). Like I mentioned, part of the issue was with a loose clamp which means some of that color / graphic would shift when printed. The most disheartening event can occur when the first couple of colors register perfectly but then one of the later colors just doesn’t lock in right and there is often very little that can be done short of re-registering each individual print.

Here is the final test print. It has some problems but still looks pretty bad ass. We are going to need to make some adjustments to the problems I’ve mentioned and it’s going to take alot of effort and time, but just seeing the potential from the test print ensures that the final product will definitely be worth it. Hopefully we will begin to tackle some of these issues in the next day or so and have the print done and up on the site in the near future.

Some people have inquired about test prints and one offs. I know some shops sell off their test prints and we considered doing that. Instead, we decided that when a person orders two prints or more, we will include a signed test print with that order(this is solely dependent on the availability of any test prints…but we will always try to include something extra as a “thank you” for the support).

Well that’s it for now. I hope some of you might have found some of this helpful or at least entertaining. Don’t forget that the success of this project depends on people spreading the word, so please help us out by letting all your social networks know about the Ink Initiative. Also, if you have purchased a print, could you take a moment of your time and leave a comment on the Ink Initiative site? It would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks! Until later…

>Keith

Posted on May 12, 2009
Filed under TDBA News, The Ink Initiative