Producing My Tracing...

Step 1: I decided I wanted to do two screens for two different colours, I had an A3 sheet of paper to draw onto. I started drawing my middle images first in pencil. My design is inspired by invertebrate sea creatures specifically shells. I used different thicknesses of lines to create texture. I decided just to keep it as an A3 image rather than a repeat image because it was slightly too difficult to do.

Step 2: I then went over to the light box and got another sheet of paper, I put my first drawings underneath the plain sheet of paper so that I could line up where I was going to put my second lot of images around the border. I had to do it on the light box because it shines light through the paper if you are wanting to trace images.

Step 3: Once I had drawn both set of images on each sheet I checked if they lined up perfectly. They were sightly off and a bit difficult to line up but it wasn't that noticeable.

Step 4: I went over all the pencil lines in black marker pen and filled in all the outlines with pattern to complete the design.

Step 5: The tracing design has to be in black so that when the screen is exposed it can pick up the block colour. I then photocopied the image onto tracing paper ready for the technician to expose it onto a screen. The image turned out to be slightly bigger than the tracing paper so I had to cut some more tracing paper and attach it to each side of the sheet and draw the missing bit onto it. I then cut out all the marks and blobs that I didn't want to show up on my screen, I used a craft knife to do this.

Health and Safety: Be careful when using a craft knife because its a very sharp tool, be extra careful when adding pressure to it because you can slip your finger and cut yourself. The technician has to expose the screen because the light box is far too bright and could be dangerous if you don't know what your doing.

Result: I'm pleased with my design and I did it fairly quick. My time keeping was good because I could really concentrate on my tracing.

How To Expose The Screen For Screen Printing<<<Click here to check out how to Expose a Screen!

Screen 1: I sketched out the outlines first using a pencil.

Screen 2: I then drew the border images and started to fill all the images using black marker pen. I used block colour.

Screen 1: For the center images I filled in the outlines with intricate detail.

Screen 1 complete!

Screen 2 complete!