OMGPosters.com: Kevin Tong’s Printing Process (Mogwai Poster)

Via OMGPosters.com: Kevin Tong’s Printing Process (Mogwai Poster)

As printing technology gets more advanced and everyone can print great photographs on their home printer, I find myself being drawn to posters screen printed by hand.  Computer printers and larger print presses combine four different colors (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black) to print photorealistic images.  Screen printing is different and much more difficult.  In screen printing, each color printed uses its own screen.  You want to have 12 colors?  You’ll need to have 12 screens.  And between each color, the ink needs to dry before the next layer can be printed.  The difficulty in this lies in registration, the placing of each screen perfectly above the print so that all the colors are in line.

Generally artists will work with three or four colors and create designs that work within that constraint.  Limited colors force the designs to be stronger.  And I appreciate the craftsmanship involved in producing a poster by hand. Kevin Tong documents this process in a series of photos below.  Kevin Tong’s poster is available for purchase at tragicsunshine.com UPDATE: Print is now SOLD OUT.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.