Sumi Ink is fantastic for making hand-drawn screen films that create exposed screens with texture and loose spontaneous marks. Sumi ink can be painted onto Inkjet Screen Film or True-Grain film to produce a variety of marks.  We experimented by painting Sumi Ink on both types of films. Thin brush strokes on Inkjet Screen Film created loose, painterly, solid lines. Painting onto True-Grain caused the ink to reticulate pleasingly into speckled marks as it dried, almost like a halftone. We exposed all our experiments onto a screen. For more details about exposing your own screen, see the following blog posts and videos: What is an exposed screen? At Home Screen Printing with Bridget or find details of our Custom Exposed Screen service. Below, we can see how the Sumi Ink behaved on True-Grain. The image on the left is the screen film, on the right is the screen print it produced. The pale areas are where the ink was diluted before being painted on the True-Grain. Sumi Ink painted on Inkjet Screen Film can be seen below. The screen film is on the right, the print on the left. We can see that the Sumi Ink does not reticulate in the same way as on the True-Grain, and instead pools in grey tones, creating an interesting effect on the screen and therefore the final screen print. These differences can be seen in the following experiments. Top left square: Sumi Ink on True-Grain Top right: Screen print produced from Sumi on True-Grain Bottom left: Sumi on Inkjet Screen Film Bottom right: Screen print produced from Sumi on Inkjet Screen Film We used these experiments to put a three-colour layered screen print together. First, printing leaves (produced by using Sumi on True-Grain) in green ink.  Next, flowers (produced by using Sumi on Inkjet Screen Film) in lilac Finally, our line drawing in black (produced using Sumi on Inkjet Screen Film).  The marks on this print are a refreshing change to the sometimes rigid designs made using digital screen film prints or pen drawn positives and offer a nice alternative if you're looking to add a little more spontaneity to designs.  To create screen films using this method you will need: Sumi Ink Inkjet Screen Film or True-Grain film Brushes For more details about exposing your own screen, see the following blog posts and videos: What is an exposed screen? At Home Screen Printing with Bridget or find details of our Custom Exposed Screen service.

First mistake: If you meet a talking dog in the street and it makes a few grammatical errors or speaks with an accent, you don’t use a few errors to dismiss the fact that this is an actual talking dog. It’s amazing. It might even be worth having it join your team. Second mistake: If […]

Though now in his seventies, Jackie Chan continues to appear on the big screen with regularity. For most world-famous actors, that’s hardly notable, but it’s not as if Sir John Gielgud, say, had spent decades filming scenes of hand-to-hand combat and sustaining severe injuries in the performance of elaborate stunts. Viewers of New Police Story […]

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They say that history is written by the victors, but that isn’t always true: sometimes it’s embroidered by the victors. Such was the case with the Bayeux Tapestry, which commemorates the build-up to and successful execution of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Created not long after the events it depicts in what we […]