Screen Print vs Giclée and Digital Print | How Hand-Pulled Prints Are Made
What is the difference between a hand-pulled screen print and a giclée or digital print?
Both may appear as works printed on paper, but the production methods are very different. At 1188, KABUTOMUSHI is printed by hand in three silkscreen colors.
Screen printing uses a separate screen for each color.
In screen printing, the image is separated by color and a separate screen is prepared for each one. Ink is placed on the screen and pushed through with a squeegee onto the paper. For multicolor work, each layer is printed separately with drying and registration between colors.
KABUTOMUSHI uses BLACK / OLIVE / MUSTARD, printed one color at a time from three separate screens.
Giclée and digital prints reproduce image data through a printer.
Giclée and other digital printing methods output image data with a printer. They can reproduce fine tonal gradations and many colors consistently from the same digital file.
With a hand-pulled screen print, physical factors such as ink deposit, screen registration and printing pressure directly influence the finished sheet. Neither method is inherently superior; they create different kinds of prints and surfaces.
Small variations remain from sheet to sheet.
When screen printing by hand, slight differences in ink density and registration can appear even with the same screens and inks. At 1188, the finished sheets are inspected and selected rather than treating every printed sheet as part of the edition.
For KABUTOMUSHI, 22 sheets were printed and 18 were selected as the final Edition 18.
As a limited-edition screen print.
KABUTOMUSHI is a three-color original screen print on TMK Poster paper, measuring 390 × 520 mm. Screen preparation took approximately five hours and printing another five hours, for roughly ten hours of production work in total.
1188 FIELD NOTES documents not only the finished image but also the process of making the screens, mixing color and printing onto paper.