Each screenprint series I do I make sure I try to encorporate a new technique so at least I can learn something from it. One thing that screenprinting offers artists is a nice set of hard restrictions to work with. First of all you are restricted by the costs of printing per color. The below picture are the blended colors for the second pull. More pictures after the jump.
So you naturally want to restrict how many colors you use in a piece. This means you have to be more creative with layering to create more colors as they overlap, or in this case use the technique of blends per pull. Here is the burned screen ready to have the inks applied for the blend.
When the screen is being pulled the inks then blend and roll over each other creating sometimes some marbled patterns. Each time its pulled the blend changes so you get much more variation with blends.
You can see here that on this one sheet you see yellow in the center and peach on the sides.
Also as a cost saving measure I arranged 3 separate illustrations on one sheet. The top has "Denbus", the bottom left contains "Deko Rig", and the bottom right contains "Gomi Tora". The crop marks and registration points also show up but they will be cut out so it doesn't matter.
They are then laid on the racks to dry before the next set of colors are applied. To make sure that the next pull lines up with the one below it the machine is adjusted so they align, but its good practice to hit each pull on a couple test papers to allow the ink to soak the screen.
You can see here that the printer here uses the same piece of paper for multiple pieces of work. If you do this enough you get a nice unintentional collage of complete awesome. Sometimes if you ask your printer for these test prints they'll give them to you. If they're as cool as Steve Horvath and Tom Dewar from D&L Screenprinting they will let you.
