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Wednesday 11 April 2012

Screenprinting Kesselskramer Rain Poster Design

Over the last few weeks I have been pretty hectic and even though it has been the Easter break I decided to go ahead and screenprint the poster that I designed for the Kesselskramer D&AD rain poster competition. Basically the brief was

"It always rains in your country, make a poster for visitors of the UK explaining why so much rain is attractive."

So quite simply the main idea behind mine was that like a persian rug which when it is made always have one flaw to make it imperfect. Pretty much the same way that the UK has formed, its flaw is the rain so embrace the rain and you can enjoy its true beauty.


 After a lot of talking me, my tutor and the art technician decided even though this was going to be a side project I should still really use 9 slides. Now I had seen a few of my friends do screenprinting before, not the whole process though and definitely didn't know how much preperation went into it. Here is a video that explains the process clearly and is mostly relevant to what I had to go through.


Now there was going to be a very detailed process that I carefully documented throughout but thank Nikon for producing an awful camera that decided to break and so most of the final pictures I have are from my Galaxy Tab. So here are a few images along the way just for the hell of it;

The fine art workshop that I took over while they were away.







Another point I can make was that it took me a whole day just trying to make the vector version of my poster, all with overlapping layers and shapes into separate images that didn't overlap but that fit neatly next to one another and then turned into a black outline. This melted my brain slightly but I stuck to it.


Was another time consuming job mixing up nine different shades of blue. Would add a Steps reference here but no-one needs to be reminded of that...


Yes I know that the bottom two are a totally unaligned but they were done on purpose. I'm not that bad at printing!

Here is one of the final prints I ended up with all cut out and no messy crop marks. I was initially dissapointed that I couldn't get a perfect print with no white spaces but then was reminded it is pretty ironic aiming for perfection when screenprinting a poster based on imperfection (and I suppose for my first attempt I should be happy). Overall what I took from this process is that it is a lot harder to choose some design that has been created and alter it to be printed this way. It would be a lot easier to allow for the design to be created with it being limited by what is easier to screenprint but where is the learning curve in that? Haha.

The best thing that was said to me was;

"You wouldn't tell by looking at it that so much went into it"

Thanks MUM!!!

I am planning on doing something a lot more impressive after easter with screenprinting but for now it is back the less hands on stuff!

4 comments :

  1. Nice post Davey. Like your finished artwork :D I know about getting the ink onto the piece but never actually knew how the stencil was made. Love the fact you quoted Dolly Parton too.

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    1. Thanks mate :) Was going to talk about the whole process of exposing the screens etc but thought it was easier to link to that video than trying to explain in writing :D Everyone loves a bit of DollY!

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  2. This looks AMAZING! Well done you for having the patience though, I'd have been screaming and throwing screens everywhere! Was so worth the extra headache :)

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    1. Thanks Lorna, was almost at that stage :D You can have one if you want!

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