How to Make a Hand-Drawn Positive for Exposure Onto a Silk Screen

Drawing on Mylar can yield greater detail and can result in a greater range of expression than drawing directly onto a silk screen.

Have a photo emulsion-coated silk screen ready for exposure.

Choose any of the following methods or combination of methods to create original art for silkscreen printing.

Select a transparent material such as Mylar (use plain Mylar if you're using a greasy drawing medium); a frosted Mylar or Lexan (this is bumpy, so is good for tonal work); wet-media acetate (best with ink); or a translucent drawing vellum.

Place photographs, photocopies or other appropriated materials underneath your transparent material as a guide, if you wish.

Choose a drawing tool: materials that work well and are very expressive are any kind of grease pencil (a No.1 litho crayon is perfect); Conte crayon; undiluted india ink with brush, pen and ink (as long as the line work is not too fine); black Prisma pencil (effective on frosted Mylar with a heavy tooth for shading); and virtually any other drawing material that does not allow light to pass through it.

Know the materials and techniques that will not work. Don't use pencils, ink washes, shading of any kind, a felt marker pen, or very fine crow-quill pen-and-ink marks.

Keep this in mind - you are making a positive transparency, which means that any mark you make will eventually translate into a printed mark via ink through the silk screen. All the marks you make have to be done with drawing materials that do not allow light to pass through them.