OUIL504 Illustration 1 Printed Pictures - Print Continued & Paper tests

After making the positives and exposing the screen, I set up on the printing bed to get started. I almost immediately entered problems with the process, as I kept having trouble with the consistency of the paint; I had to wash down and reset my bed at least 3 times before prints started to come out with any degree of success, which set me back quite a bit.

The paint was either far too thick or far too runny, regardless of the amount of medium I used. I later came to the conclusion that it might have been the particular acrylic I was using from the print room, and bought the acrylic separately in an attempt to avoid it happening again. This was a particularly stressful part of the module - because no amount of printing was producing a satisfactory result and I went a good 2-3 weeks with no finished prints to speak of - however, it did give me an opportunity to test out a variety of paper to see which would be most suitable.

I ended up printing on a range of papers - Standard Matt White, SNOWDEN Cartridge and Somerset Off-white handmade paper in particular yielded a really nice end quality to them. I really liked the off-white paper, and the way it absorbed the ink - so that is eventually what I ended up moving forward with.

As a result of this particular part of the brief, I decided that in order to improve the quality of the final, I would have to improve the quality of the actual images that I was using to print from - so I re-drew them, making them a lot crisper, and adding more character to them: