What is Screen Printing?

In the interest of making this blog accessible for everyone, let's start at the very beginning.  What IS screen printing?

Basically, screen printing is a printing technique where ink is forced through a piece of mesh that is partially blocked by a stencil.  In the areas where there is no stencil, ink transfers through the holes in the mesh onto whatever substrate you are printing on (fabric, paper, etc.).  In the areas where the stencil is present, the ink is blocked and nothing is printed.  

Pretty simple, right?  You've got something to print on (the substrate), you've got something to print with (the ink) and you've got something in between that determines where the ink can and cannot go (the stencil).  The shape or design of the "something in between" (i.e. the stencil) determines the shape of your print.  That's the basic concept behind screen printing.

Before moving on, I have to say something briefly about the word "screen printing" (at the risk of boring the hell out of everyone including myself).  It's the exact same thing as "silk screening" and "serigraphy".  These words are often used interchangeably which can be a little confusing.  Generally professional or commercial printers go with "screen printing", serious artists tend to prefer "serigraphy" (presumably because it sounds pretentious) and the rest of the world is most familiar with "silk screening".  For this blog I'll mainly use the term "screen printing" because silk hasn't been used as a mesh material for about 40 years, and I can't take the word "serigraphy" very seriously.  Glad we got that out of the way.

So, we covered what screen printing is, and the many other names it goes by.   That seems like a good starting point and definitely enough for one post.