DIY Screenprinting: How to Turn Your Home Into a T-Shirt Factory

by John Isaacson

Overview

A fascinating graphic novel that details the art and science of screen-printing from inception to printed t-shirts to working in a print shop to understanding line screens, to hawking your printed wares on the street! How to build a screen, burn an image, test how things are going, pull ink, wash out screens, know what screen mesh to use, and creative ideas. It's a true joy to see the exaggerated illustrations while learning such a useful and practical craft! How to turn your home into a t-shirt factory! Essential for people who don't know how to screen-print or those a bit rusty.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781621064893
Publisher:	Microcosm Publishing
Publication date:	03/09/2012
Series:	DIY
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	104 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

John Isaacson has been screenprinting on t-shirts, paper, and tree bark for over fifteen years. He is an educator, cartoonist, and musician living in Berkeley, California. He has previously lived in Ireland, Peru, Chile and China, and is currently at work making comics, T-shirts, and teaching afterschool writing and cartooning classes. His many projects can be found online at www.unlay.com.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

IN ORDER TO PRINT T-SHIRT IN THE COMFORT OF YOUR OWN HOME, YOU MUST PROCURE A SILKSCREEN

First, ya gotta pick 'em up at the market ...

Then ya gotta hammer 'em together:

Dangnabbit!

Cut the silk to fit each one

Radical

Fasten the silk to the screen with tube-in-a-groove or a STAPLER

Staple gun-Lookout!

BOO-YAH!!!

STAPLE @ 45° angle consistently

Hold tight!

staple this edge 1st

THEN GOT TO THE OPPOSITE SIDE

Staple this edge 2nd

3rd

4th

Shovin-rubber in groove is a pain in the boo-tay!

THWING

PLAP

TWANG!

POINK

BOING

BONG!

SILK SCREENS SHOULD BE TIGHT ENOUGH TO PLAY DRUMS ON!

NOW WE GET THE VERY SPECIAL BRAND NEW NEAT & CLEAN SILK SCREEN ...

AND POUR MUCK ALL OVER IT!!!

MIX VERY WELL

OLD YOGURT CONTAIN

1 part sensitizer

4 parts emulsion

SCRAPE the MUCK across the screen with a straight edge* to coat the screen evenly ...

* can be a piece of card board.

Pretend it's a bulldozer

VROOM! VROOM!

LOOK FOR LIGHT COMING THRV

When you get a nice THIN, EVEN coat of emulsion on BOTH sides of the screen, hold it up to a LIGHT to make sure there are no uncoated areas

OR-Hold it up to a window or the sky to check that the screen is entirely BLOCKED-OUT by the emulsion

If it is blocked, put it in a DARK PLACE to dry

1½ hours Later

Dang! Still wet!

Three hours Later ...

MAN!!! WHEN IS THIS THING EVERY GONNA DRY???

Get a fan to help it dry faster!

WHHZZZ

What's that Sound?

House mate

Let the screen dry for 24 hours

OH, MY NICE, DRY SCREEN!

Place screen under transparency

piece of glass

1 transparency 2 transparency

silkscreen

black paper

table

Position lamps at specified distance*

EMULSION GETTING BURNED & HARD

EMULSION STAYING COOL & SOFT

KEEP AN EYE ON THE CLOCK!!!

NOTES ON TRANSPARENCIES

DO NOT use grayscale images; use ONLY black and white images (half tones or bit-maps). Set copier on maximum darkness to get a thick layer of toner.

WHEN THE SCREEN HAS BEEN EXPOSED LONG ENOUGH TO HARDEN THE EMULSION COMPLETELY ...

... GO IN THE BATHROOM

I wanna roll!

AND TURN ON THE HOT WATER IN THE SHOWER

WHILE THE WATER GETS HOT:

TURN OFF LIGHTS!

REMOVE GLASS!

REMOVE TRANSPARENCIES

EMULSION IS STILL EXPOSING!

HURRY!

TAKE SILKSCREEN INTO SHOWER!

Rinse the screen out IMMEDIATELY after you have exposed it. If you do wash it out right away, the emulsion that was unexposed (beneath the dark part of the transparency) will begin to expose and harden, making it impossible to wash out and impossible to print with. Then soft unexposed emulsion will run out of the screen and foam when you wash it.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Do-It-Yourself Screenprinting"
by .
Copyright © 2018 John Isaacson.
Excerpted by permission of Microcosm Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: How-to print T-shirt at home,
Chapter 2: Trial and tribulation on Telegraph Avenue,
Chapter 3: Dream job or nightmare job?,
Chapter 4: Printing on paper,
Appendix: Manual color separations,
Recommended reading,
Glossary,
On-line resources,

Editorial Reviews

"Now, thanks to this wonderful comic book, I can make screen prints at home, too! It’s a bit more complicated, especially if you want more than one color, but John breaks down the process into easy-to-understand steps. He shares his experiences selling his work, moving out of his house and into mass-production and gives helpful hints to DIY printers along the way." - Xerography Dept

"Ever wanted to make your own t-shirts? Ever thought that it would be way too complicated and/or expensive to even try, so you gave up right away? This book will prove you wrong. It’s a step by step instruction guide for how to make your own shirts whether you have access to state-of-the-art materials or not, or even (potentially) if you don’t even have electricity." - Optical Sloth

"Like Scott McCloud's landmark books, this is a textbook written in comics form. Isaacson tells the story using an autobiographical approach, as if he's learning right along with his readers. His personality and enthusiasm for the subject comes through to add extra interest to all the instructions and details." - Midnight Fiction

From the Publisher