Studio Day | Screenprinting Moonlit Peaks

A day at the print studio screenprinting 'Moonlit Peaks', inspired by a trip to the Isle of Skye, the largest island in the Inner Hebrides, with it’s beautiful lochs surrounded by rugged ridges.

I visited in the summer, and during my trip experienced an unusual 26 degrees weather on the island, with it cooling down a bit in the evenings, and a magnificent full Buck Moon illuminated the mountainous scenery and glistened over the water.

I'm creating collages made up of photographs taken on my trip, and first to be taken into the print studio was 'Moonlit Peaks'. Scroll to see it come to life as a print after a couple of days at the studio.

I coated a screen in photosensitive emulsion and left it to dry overnight. My collage was printed on a transparent film, which I then exposed onto the screen under UV light the next day using an exposure unit. After exposing, I took the screen to the washout area to wash out the emulsion which hadn't hardened on the dark areas of the image under the UV light, leaving my collaged image on the screen. Once dried off, I taped the areas of the screen where I didn't want to get ink and I was ready to start screenprinting.

After mixing my inks - paint and graphite powder mixed with printing medium, I did some test prints on newsprint. I did this for each layer before printing on the Somerset paper, just to check that the image was printing ok. I first printed the circular background, then the blue moon before adding the last graphite layer. Before hand pulling the ink through the screen with a squeegee, I registered the image each time with a transparent film that I had printed the image onto first. This allowed me to line up the image in place with the edge of the circle etc. and for everything to be in the same place on multiple prints.

Moonlit Peaks
Screenprint with graphite powder and ink
on 250gsm Somerset White Satin paper with a deckled edge
Limited Edition of 12
Paper size 38 x 28.5cm, print size 20cm diameter

I've printed 'Moonlit Peaks' on Somerset White Satin paper, there are a few more pictures over on my shop. Just wanted to mention this in case you already have one of my other circular Shin-hanga inspired prints, as they're on off white paper.

Hope you enjoyed this insight into my studio days and screenprinting process!


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