This refresher & authorization workshop welcomes students with previous screenprinting experience who are feeling out-of-practice or fuzzy regarding the finer points of the process, or who have never printed at Spudnik before, and want familiarity with our facilities and offerings. Students should have already completed a one-day workshop or full class, although it need not have been at Spudnik. We also welcome printers that would like support working through a particularly complex project or reoccurring printing issue.

The class will review an assortment of skills such as selecting the best mesh count, applying the perfect coat of photo emulsion, troubleshooting and diagnosing exposure and printing issues, ink mixing, registration, and screen reclamation. Equally as importantly, we will address how to consider these technical factors and limitations when designing a project for printing.

During the workshops, each student will expose a screen, and work with peers to print a two-color image designed to hone nuanced printing skills. Students are welcome to bring specific questions about their next project.

To help build printing confidence at Open Studio sessions, students are invited to return within the week to put their freshly acquired knowledge to use. Through this workshop, students will not only brush up on old skills and become authorized to print at Spudnik, but are sure to walk away with new morsels of useful information regarding the art of screenprinting.

Working directly on t-shirts, you’ll spend real time at the press getting comfortable with the equipment and the workflow. You’ll learn how ink behaves on fabric, how to mix a custom color, and how to get consistent results across multiple prints. Registration — the process of aligning your second color precisely to your first — gets dedicated attention so you leave with a clear understanding of how to nail it every time.

Students will leave with finished printed tees and full authorization to use the screenprinting studio independently, so you can keep coming back and making.

Get your hands inky and your prints analog. Over three sessions, you’ll explore three completely different printmaking traditions — each with its own tools, materials, and magic. From screen printing your own wearables on day one, to scratching metal plates and pulling intaglio prints, to running paper through a letterpress — this series is designed for curious, bold makers who want to learn how images are made.

Session 1
June 7 9am-12pm
Screen printing — wear your work
Start by screen printing an apron you’ll use for the rest of the series — then keep the press warm with t-shirts, tote bags, and whatever else you bring to print on. You’ll learn to expose a photographic screen, mix custom ink colors, and pull clean prints through the mesh. Walk away with wearable art.

Session 2
June 14 9am-12pm
Drypoint etching — scratch, score, and print

Learn the fundamentals of intaglio printmaking by drawing directly onto a metal plate with a steel needle. Drypoint is immediate and expressive — the burr your tool raises holds ink in ways that produce rich, velvety lines unlike anything you can get from a brush or pen. You’ll learn plate wiping and printing technique, and leave with a finished plate and a set of prints.

Session 3
June 21 9am-12pm
Letterpress — texture, pressure, and the printed page

Finish the series on a machine that shaped the modern world. Using stencils and low-relief collages — cut paper, string, netting, plant material — you’ll create richly textured prints by running them through a letterpress cylinder. The varying thickness of your materials determines how much ink transfers to the page, producing nuanced, one-of-a-kind impressions up to 19″ × 25″. Experiment with hand inking and multi-layer compositions to tell a story, build an illustration, or just see what the press can do. 

A selection of projects will give students the opportunity to produce prints from hand drawings, digital designs, and photographic or found imagery. Students will become familiar with the full process — from selecting the right screen, to darkroom exposure, ink mixing, printing, and reclaiming screens. With support from an experienced printer, students will practice printing and, equally important, troubleshooting.

By the end of this class, students will know their way around the print shop and be authorized to print independently through Spudnik Press’s Open Studio program.