Print Club London screen print buying guide:

 Screen-printing – also known as Silkscreen Printing or Serigraphy

Screen printing is a laborious printing technique wherein each individual colour or layer is hand-printed using a squeegee which pushes ink through a screen with an image (stencil) that blocks some areas and places a beautiful inky flat finish on to the paper or fabric beneath the screen. The process is repeated with a different screen for each layer of colour. The technique first appeared in China during the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and was popularised by Andy Warhol and other pop artists in the 1960s .

Limited Edition

A limited edition print is restricted to a specific number of copies according to the artist and once the edition is sold out no additional prints will be made or available to sell. This has the potential to make a limited edition print more expensive.

Signed Artwork

A signed artwork means that each individual print is signed by hand by the artist, giving the artist final confirmation of approval of the work.

Hand-Pulled

The difference between hand-pulled screen prints as opposed to screen-printing machines is that each layer of the print is pulled individually by the printer using different coordinated screens and colours. This, of course, takes longer to produce but is more of a celebrated art form as opposed to a machine which can print multiple colours and many prints in one go.

Number of Colours (or Layers)

The number of colours is often mentioned because each colour is made with a different screen and ink squeegee individually. It not only multiplies the length of time to print but dramatically increases the mistake ratio, also known as the sodding mis-print pile! The reason: being human, you WILL make mistakes. If you are skilled enough to only make 5% mistakes per print run, the mistakes that you do make will never be on the same print , so if you print 100 pieces of paper with 4 colours, you will be lucky to not have 20 rejects.

Overlays, halftones, CMYK and colour merges

To maximise the impact of an image whilst still using fewer layers, screenprinting illustrators use tricks of the trade to artwork their designs to get the maximum out of each layer. These include semi-transparent inks that overlap each other to get third, fourth, fifth colours. Halftones can trick the eye into thinking that there are gradients of colour when the tonal range is actually made of different sized printed dots on the paper. CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) means that the four colours are printed in layers using four separate screens of small dots that trick the eye in thinking there are more colours, for example your eye will see green if a blue dot is next to a yellow one. Together, these four layers create an image that, if done skilfully, can look as detailed and well coloured as a photograph. Colour merge is when inks are mixed on the screen itself while you are printing which creates a colour gradient. Because the ink is mixing as the squeegee is pulled it takes careful manipulation to keep control of the mixing of the colour and constant tweaking. This process means that each print will be slightly different depending on how the colours are mixing together on the squeegee and makes it very difficult for big editions.

AP

Artist proofs are a designated set of identical prints outside of the numbered copies in the edition that are retained by the artist or publisher. They are often more desirable because of the limited availability.

PP

Printers proofs are identical prints to the numbered copies but are the property of the printers responsible for pulling the edition. They are outside of the numbered copies. Again, these are often more desirable because of the limited availability.

Flipping

Buying art with the intention to sell straight away to make a quick buck. We keep the costs of our prints very low so that they are affordable to more people. We want people to buy because they love the artwork or the artist or illustrator. We don’t sell multiples of the same prints to the same individuals to avoid flipping and forcing costs up for the real print lover.

Imperfections

Screen printing is a physical form of printing and often it is the artist themselves forcing ink through a meshed screen to create each layer. This means that because it is not a digital, immaculate, sterile process there may be small imperfections or slight variants, but this is what makes screen printing special. We would never sell artwork that we felt was not printed to our high standards. But we would never reject a print, for example, that had the artist’s inky finger prints on the back. For us it shows a real connection of the craft.

How to choose a print

We have prints by established and emerging artists, all of which, we feel, are amazing prints and at great prices. We have done a lot of begging with the big names to produce an affordable print for us and have collaborated with artists that are emerging and want to get their work out there. We hope you see, as we do, the skill and craftsmanship in the design and the prowess in the printing.

Our advice in buying a print is buy what YOU like. If you feel it’s great art other people will think so too. You never know, you may buy from an artist that becomes the next Banksy.