Learn the art of art screen printing!
Serigraphy, the art of ‘art screen printing’ is now gaining popularity in India. So, DMI will soon hold workshop on Serigraphy. However, since we have just started working on this new technique in DMI, it will take few months to fine tune on this subject and bring it into my workshops as a regular topic.
24 Sep 2015 | 1464 Views | By Bhargav Mistry
In serigraphy screen printing, many printers ask me ‘why cannot we print serigraphy using high quality digital printing machine’?
The first reason is that if it is digital, it’s not “serigraphy” which is the latin name of screen printing! This technique exists and the name of those prints is “giclée” or “digigraphy”. There are many other reasons why we cannot but I shall highlight those points in my workshop. But maybe the main question is how can we add value addition and UV special effects on serigraphy after we print digitally? I mean, unless it’s a flat bed digital machine on which we can get a chance to register the job like traditional three guides system as we use in screen printing. But how will you register the job on screen printing machine to add UV special effects, if it’s printed on a digital machine. Many experts have also informed me that even it’s difficult to match/register jobs printed on flat bed digital machines, because those prints are not that perfect and dimensionally stable, piece to piece.
Anyway, after a long break we shall once again demonstrate how you can earn through serigraphy screen printing using various UV special effects screen printing to add value on your arts and graphics.
I have observed that in India there are few serigraphy screen print companies and most of them print cut colours (solid flat colours) without halftones. Hence most of their arts do not have gradation and halftones and that’s the reason they end up printing 12-14-16 or sometimes even more colours but they can never achieve gradations (0-100 / 100-0) in their prints and arts are all made of brush strokes and strokes are mainly never flat tints unless painted specifically with flat colours.
So without gradations and vignettes one cannot make exact reproduction of the original art, no matter how many colours are printed. Even the separation will take hours to divide image into special colours. As a matter of fact, some American screen printers made and often still make serigraphy with 50 printed colours and sometimes more.
In the past, Michel Caza printed one time in the seventies 100 colours just as a “challenge”! But to avoid this, he invented in the sixties the “halftones without dots” that allows print full colour jobs with between 9 and 14 colours. Then, and still now, he put this technique to 7 printed colours.
There are many companies who print serigraphy on offset machine but those prints look very much flat when compared to screen printed serigraphy and that’s because of the ink thickness achieved through screen printing. But to print special effects one has to anyway depend on screen printing. Here again, same as above, if it is “offset”, it cannot be “serigraphy”. Fine art prints are then made in what is named “photolithography” a name coming from the old technique from which offset was invented name “stone-lithography”.
My guru Michel Caza in Paris, France is one of the finest serigraphy screen printers and in his company “Graficaza” he had one division mainly focused and specialised on serigraphy (art screen printing). This company succeeded 1984 to “Atelier d’Art Michel Caza” existing since 1964. Graficaza was sold 2004, but they stop to screen print Fine art and luxury POP and disappeared in 2005!
Even till today he still enjoys printing fine art and serigraphy near Paris, in the screen printing workshop of his friend, the now famous artist Fabienne Verdier. In addition to several serigraphy printed for and with Fabienne, he printed this year two serigraphy of his wife Therese, painter but also Yoga and Ayurveda teacher. Some of those serigraphy prints were given to the winners of Gold Awards in the FESPA competition.
In 2003, I was one of his lucky pupils to get training from Michel Caza, the master of screen printing, when I visited his Graficaza in Paris, France.
In fact here I would like to inform you that on December 2006, DMI was inaugurated by my guru Michel Caza and he conducted two workshops one after another and his second workshop was on serigraphy screen printing.
With all his blessings and knowledge today after 9 years I am proud to announce regular workshop on arts and serigraphy screen printing soon at DMI…
After he conducted his first serigraphy workshop in DMI, we continued to demonstrate serigraphy screen printing but very few screen printers had shown serious interest on this process because they had to invest on machine and good screen making system which was expensive those days and without proper equipment one cannot print high quality serigraphy.
But today I don’t see this as an issue because Grafica now has more than a thousand of screen printers using our Nano range of products and out of those many have invested in NPL which includes of UV curing machine and 5-In-1 screen making system. Those printers who have screen printing machine, proper screen making system and UV Curing Machine can very well print high quality serigraphy.
If you have already automated your shop floor and are seeking for some diversification in business or want to learn something new then this is the right time to invest your time and energy to learn serigraphy at DMI. You can learn how to reproduce arts and paintings using traditional screen printing process.
So with the knowledge and technique given to me by my Guru Michel Caza let’s all learn serigraphy screen printing the Cazaway process at DMI.