Print Club Screenprinting Workshop

 A few weeks ago myself, my other half, and his brother, attended a screenprinting workshop at Print Club in Dalston. I've never screenprinted before, but it's something I've always wanted to try so was super excited to give it a go! The venue itself was in a quirky mews, surrounded by awesome street art (I love snapping photos of all the street art I spy in London.)

 We had all designed our artwork for the session at home, and the first task was checking our artwork was suitable. The instructors showed us how to convert more detailed artwork, such as photographs, into files that could be made into screens. Then we prepared our screens before exposing our images on to them. My absolute favourite part was rinsing the screen after exposing, and seeing my image appear as if by magic!

 We had to leave our screens to dry for a bit before we could actually use them to print with, so we had a little lunch break. Jonathan wanted to try a nearby Turkish restaurant that he'd read about, which turned out to be REALLY yummy, and also super cheap. I had probably the best falafel I've ever eaten, and I've eaten my fair share of falafel over the years.

The final task of the day was learning to print with our screens - how to load the screen into the bed, and how to pull the ink evenly so as to get a nice crisp print. Anyone who screenprints regularly must have really good arms muscles, because I struggled with this stage a bit, even though I had someone helping me! 

 Finally we got a chance to nose around the Print Club gallery - I was really interested to see the pieces other people had created using screenprinting. There seems to be no end to the things you can screenprint on to - the Big Ben on books was my favourite piece, and I can't even work out how they managed to do it so perfectly!

All in all it was an AWESOME day! I'm hoping to join a screenprinting studio so I can do some limited edition pieces, and put my new found knowledge to use! If you want to try your hand at screenprinting then firstly, DO IT because it is so much fun, and there's so much you can do with it. And secondly, if you're in or near London I recommend Print Club as the guys there are so knowledgeable, friendly, and passionate.