Screen-printing

Screen-printing, also known as silkscreening or serigraphy, is a printmaking technique that creates a sharp-edged single-color image using a stencil and a porous fabric. A screenprint or serigraph is an image created using this technique.

Printing technique

A screen is made of a piece of porous, finely woven fabric (originally silk, but typically made of polyester or nylon since the 1940s) stretched over a wood or aluminium frame. Areas of the screen are blocked off with a non-permeable material—a stencil—which is a negative of the image to be printed; that is, the open spaces are where the ink will appear.

Related Topics:
Silk - Polyester - Nylon

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The screen is placed on top of a piece of dry paper or fabric. Ink is placed on top of the screen, and a squeegee (rubber blade) is used to spread the ink evenly across the screen. The ink passes through the open spaces in the screen onto the paper or fabric below; then the screen is lifted away. The screen can be re-used after cleaning. If more than one color is being printed on the same surface, the ink is allowed to dry and then the process is repeated with another screen and different color of ink.

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