Screen Printing - The Art of T-shirt Printing

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The Art of T-shirt Printing

All men by nature are born with the gift of creativity and a strong desire for beauty. Men often express this creative genius in art, science, and literature. T-shirts and apparels are no exception. Man has used T-shirt printing or screen printing as the new avenue to express his creativity. T-shirt printing may be considered commonplace because it's accessible and cheap as opposed to paintings and sculptures that cost a fortune and has an elitist factor. But no matter how worlds apart art and T-shirt printing are, T-shirt printing may be considered as an art. This is for the fact that it involves design creation where man can make masterpieces, although in a medium of T-shirts and any apparels.

T-shirt printing process is simple because of technologies coming out that help the printing of T-shirts easier and simpler. Basically, there are four essential steps to follow. First, is the conception or creation of design or artwork for the T-shirt or apparel. The design can be original or just a copy of other designs taken from the internet or favorite designs of famous clothing lines. It depends upon the person what design he's going to make, but he should make sure that the design presentation is clear because there are some designs that do not have quite positive results. There are some instances that designs printed from word document become distorted when printed on the shirt. It is a must that the outcome of the design when printed on the shirt would be the same quality as it was pictured out. After the design has been made, the designs are separated from various colors involved in the design. These are then printed on transparency and vellums.

The second process involves securing the transparency in the meshed screen tightly and coating it. After it dries up using a photo polymer screen emulsion, it will harden as it was exposed to light.
The transparencies are not hardened because it prevents that from happening. After three to five minutes the emulsion will become hard in parts where there was no transparency used. Afterwards, he has to wash it up. Soft materials will be washed away, leaving the signal to print. The third step involves screen printing, where the person has to insert the design. The final step includes drying the design using a conveyor belt to avoid fading designs during laundry.