Our demonstrator for the February meeting was Rick Freed. The demo was on February 13, 2002. If you missed this one, then you missed a real treat. Rick demonstrated how he makes silk screen prints.

We have some photographs of the event in case you could not make it to the show in person. You can click on any of the images on this page to view a larger version of it. Then, use the Back button on your browser to return to this page.

In the photo above, Rick shows Judy how he creates a photo mask by drawing areas for a specific color on a plastic sheet. The areas to be colored are drawn using a black marker on the plastic sheet, which is positioned over the original drawing. The areas which are colored black on the sheet will be the areas that receive the color on the paper when the silk screen is pulled.

Once the mask is made and the screen has been coated with a photo sensitive material, the screen is placed down on the mask on a light table. The screen is then exposed to light through the mask for about 15 minutes. In the locations which are masked by the black marker the photo sensitive material remains soft, while the other parts of the photo sensitive material are hardened by the light. Washing the screen then removes the soft photo resist, leaving open areas for the ink to penetrate during the pull. The hardened photo resist remains in the silk, thus blocking the ink from penetrating to the paper in those locations.

You can see a similar screen propped up at the left side of the photo. Rick had pulled a print from that screen earlier. Part of that print is visible on the table near Judy's hand.

When pulling the print, the paper is placed on the board, then the silk screen is dropped down onto the paper. Ink is put onto the screen and then pulled across it with a squeegee. Here is a photo of Rick cleaning the squeegee:

The squeegee is basically a board with a strip of rubber along one side. It is used to pull the ink across the silk and force it through the silk onto the paper. You can see the print that he just pulled on the table in the lower right corner of the photo.

And then, there is the cleanup. With silk screen there is always lots of cleanup.

Thanks again to Rick Freed for a wonderful demonstration of his technique. If you were unfortunate enough to miss this demonstration, make plans now to see our demo in March. We are looking forward to having Dustan Knight show us some tips on painting with watercolor.