Tape 03 -- Heatwave 28.05.26 --

Tracks --The Specials, Too Hot. Goldie, Dragonfly. Thelonious Monk & Sonny Rollins, I Want To Be Happy  --

 After struggling through a heatwave for the last few days temperatures are now (finally!) starting to drop again. This kind of heat pretty much rules out screen printing, for me at least. You’re already in a race against time when you’re printing at the best of times, let alone during a heat wave. The ink that we use to screen print (which despite the name is actually closer in consistency to acrylic paint) won’t dry immediately on its own, but when we prime/flood the screen we push a thin layer into the mesh, which can dry out pretty quickly. Combining this with an unusually hot ambient temperature can speed this process up even more, adding to an already stressful process. There are ways around this of course: additives you can add to the ink to slow the drying process or thin the ink, you could always add water to it while its on the screen. 

But these come with their own downsides. Adding too much additive can mean the ink will actually take too long to dry or effect the colour/quality of the ink, adding water will effectively make the next few pulls of the screen useless so you’ll have to print onto newsprint several times before you can start the printing process again. Heat also isn’t the only thing that can have an impact on the printing process. Too much moisture in the air (e.g on a rainy day or, even, if the door to the washout room is left open while the power washer is running) can add to the drying time, leaving prints in the racks in an improperly ventilated space can cause the exposed paper to start to yellow. Store ink in a space that gets too cold and it can start to effect the consistency, becoming overly thick and hard to work with.

These are the kind of considerations that are obvious to me now but took a lot of getting used to. The second course I did took place on a hot day mid august, I was taking too long to register my second layer so my ink was starting to dry out resulting in the characteristic blotchy appearance of when that happens (almost like a vintage/distressed filter or texture you might use in photoshop). Luckily the course was being led by an experienced printmaker who taught me how to deal with that when it happens    - mist the screen with water, quickly flood + pull + flood + pull onto sheets of newsprint until the ink comes through correctly again -   How the conditions of where you print can impact the quality of what you produce is something you learn as you go along. Learning to screen print can feel as much a case of learning how to respond to conditions on the day as anything else.

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