How to Make Your Own Hand-Drawn Screens for Screen Printing on Clay An Easy Way to Make Custom Screens in your Home Studio Paul Andrew Wandless

Making custom screens for printing on clay can be a little daunting if you are new to the world of screen printing. But, it is actually fairly accessible once you know the materials you need and how to use them.

In this video, an excerpt from his video Screen Printing on Clay, Paul Andrew Wandless demonstrates how to use screen block and screen filler to make hand-drawn silk screens for printing on clay. - Jennifer Poellot Harnetty, editor

This clip was excerpted from Screen Printing on Clay with Paul Andrew Wandless which is available in the Ceramic Arts Network Shop!

Need to screen print onto a round form? Check out this tip from the CAN archives!

By screen-printing the glaze onto upholstery foam, and then quickly pressing bisqueware down onto it, the pot will absorb the wet glaze. Using your hands under the foam to wrap and press it up against the pot all the way around, you can pattern the entire surface of the pot, with only a single seam. By planning ahead, and selecting patterns that were not overly geometric, you can also have even the seam disappear.

Foam is capable of stretching around curves without wrinkling or folding, reaching into shallow recesses, and carrying the volume necessary for glaze development. Unlike transfer paper, used with stains and oxides, foam can work with glaze! Transfer paper, which is often recommended for screen-printing onto pottery, can only absorb small amounts of colorants, and so is useful only for concentrated oxides or stains, rather than the volume of coating that glaze development requires. Also, transfer paper can’t conform to a round shape.

Using foam to screen print onto round pots is actually an easy process. This technique could work very well with sculpture too! Happy screening onto your work!

**First published in 2012.