Things To Remember When Screen Printing That Are Relevant For More Things Than Screen Printing
Just Do It
Slow down. Every single step of the process should be methodical. Most of the mistakes are not because you are moving too quickly but you are moving on too quickly. If the design doesn’t seem to be lining up with the registration do not just close the press and print and hope it is close enough. Walk around the block visualizing what the print would look like. If something feels off there is most certainly something off.
Do not skip steps that have resulted in perfect results previously. This line of thinking can get muddy because the results didn’t necessarily rely on every thing you did. If you kept scratching your belly that time you made your favorite print it probably wasn’t important to the process but until you can prove it wasn’t you should continue scratching your belly. Or a more relevant tip, lift the screen when you flood it. Yeah it worked fine for the blockier under base. Of course it did. But when you move on to a large image with tiny halftones pause for a second and think “what would happen if I skipped the industry standard of lifting the screen before flooding it”.
Take notes. Writing down the things that work and don’t work will make it easier to be consistently great. As you practice, your muscle memory will get closer to perfection, but we are flawed beings and when working in a complicated system with many steps and using a brain with many thoughts (many of which are distorted), you have to be vulnerable and understand you are not a robot.
Have fun. Mistakes do happen. This is why I love screen printing. There have been better ways to make prints for like 4 decades now so remind yourself why you are still participating in screen printing. It will hurt for a little bit when you fail at the same thing you failed at previously but the ink has been transferred and all you can do is be better next time.
Remind yourself why you are doing the thing. Again and again and again. When you mess up. When you make something beautiful. Stop for a second and take in your surroundings. Do a body scan. Your hobbies become a job only when you forget the reason you started doing it in the first place.
I just failed. It is the second time I failed at the same thing and I failed because I skipped a step. Right now I feel beat down. The hours are tallying up and the project is getting more expensive. My deadline is almost here and I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish the shirt in time.
But if I can deliver a product that makes my customer smile it all goes away. They won’t be aware of how much time I spent trying to get it perfect. Ironically the more perfect I make it the less impressive it is. I will never match the perfection and capacity of a computer but I’m okay with that. I do this because it brings me joy.
