Photo-emulsion screen prints

I posted this first by mistake on my In the Kitchen blog. Now I'm putting it here where it belongs, and have added a brief comparison to thermofax screen printing in the first paragraph.

Last week I made a couple of silk screens using a photo-emulsion process for getting the image onto the screen. Here's an explanation of photo-emulsion screen printing. Happy as I am with the napkins I've printed with paper laminated screens, I was interested to try out the photo emulsion process, as certain other things are possible with this method.  (The same things are also possible with a thermofax screen, but the maximum width of a thermofax screen is 8.5." I could make these photo emulsion screens 18" square, and one could go larger.)

• I can print a sharp-edged image, including a fine-line drawing (detail above, and image of whole screen below). I wrote out in caps the same quote from Martin Buber that I've used before, but I did it on a much smaller scale, writing onto a Wacom tablet so that the image went directly into a Photoshop file. I wrote on the diagonal, and then, in another layer on Photoshop, superimposed the diagonal going in the opposite direction. I like very much how this came out, though I would have preferred a somewhat larger scale.  

• I can print a line drawing, as above, and have the line be what prints (here dark blue). When doing a line drawing on a paper-laminated screen, what prints is the background, leaving the line itself white.

• I can play around with a photograph, using filters in Photoshop to abstract it, looking for an interesting design.  Here's a photo I took of a sheet of baklava I had baked, and then the printed result of a filtered image that I put into a repeat:

Many thanks to Andrea Ferrigno, who teaches printmaking at the college where I worked for many years, for taking the time to teach me how to use the photo-emulsion equipment recently purchased by the college, and to student assistants Kristina Mengis and Kristen Marvin who helped me step by step through the process.  For my ability to use Photoshop, a shout-out to the Pixeladies, Deb Cashatt and Kris Sazaki, with whom I've taken three online classes--their classes are great!