How to Prepare Your Image for Screen Printing

To successfully screen-print an image, an artist must prepare the image for transfer to the fabric, paper or other media. The image itself has to withstand the screen-printing process as well as be immersed in the chemicals of the ink, paint or dye.

Instructions

1. Decide if the image will be used for multicolor printing or single-color block printing. Silk-screening a multicolor image requires a screen for each color, and each screen must be registered exactly in relation to the others to prevent overprinting and bleed-through.

2. Use line art, clip art or block printed designs. The design should be bold and balanced. A freehand drawing can also be turned into a silk screen by simply drawing a pencil sketch and painting that onto the screen with glue.

3. Convert a photograph into a bold black-and-white image using computer graphics software. The edges of the images should be clearly defined.

4. Trace or print out designs from a clip-art collection. The printed image should be crisp and clear with no shading or complex cross-hatching.

5. Make the image smaller than the squeegee you will use for screen printing. The image must be small enough to be printed with a single pass of the squeegee to avoid striping and uneven application of the ink.