What Is Screen Printing? A Guide to Fine Art Screen Printing

A screen print can look deceptively simple when you see the finished piece hanging on a wall. There is the image, the paper, and the color. What sits behind it is a much more involved process of separating an image into layers and rebuilding it one color at a time.

Screen printing has existed in different forms for more than a century, moving from commercial printing and textiles into fine art, poster design, and contemporary practice. I've also worked with it for many years as part of my studio practice in Auckland.

I work with hand-separated screen printing to take ideas that begin as paintings and rebuild them as limited-edition prints. Understanding how that happens gives you a very different appreciation of what a screen print actually is.

What is screen printing?

Screen printing is a process that involves stencil-based printing. You pull ink across a fine mesh screen with a squeegee, passing it through the open areas of the stencil and stopping where the stencil blocks the mesh. The ink then swiftly spreads on the paper or another surface underneath.

You might see the process described by a few other common names: screen printing, screenprinting, screenprint, silkscreen, and serigraphy.

The basic method is the same. The terminology changes with the setting.

“Silkscreen” comes from the silk mesh that was traditionally used in the process. Modern screen printing generally uses synthetic mesh, particularly polyester. “Serigraphy” is the term commonly associated with fine art screen printing. A screen print made as a fine art work is often referred to as a serigraph.

For a fine art print, the screen becomes more than a way to put ink onto paper. It becomes part of how the artwork is constructed.

How does screen printing work?

The easiest way to understand screen printing is to follow what happens to one image.

1. Preparing the screen

A screen consists of a fine mesh stretched tightly across a frame. The mesh needs to hold its tension so that ink can pass through consistently and the image can be registered accurately.

The mesh itself affects the print. Different mesh counts allow different amounts of ink through and suit different levels of detail. A finer mesh can hold more detailed imagery, while a more open mesh allows a heavier deposit of ink.

The screen is the physical surface that carries the stencil. Everything that follows depends on getting this stage right.

2. Creating the stencil

The stencil determines where the ink can go.

One common method uses a light-sensitive photoemulsion. The emulsion is applied to the screen and exposed to light with the artwork positioned over it. The exposed areas harden, while the areas protected by the image wash away. This leaves sections of open mesh for the ink to pass through.

In fine art screen printing, the artwork is usually separated into its individual color components before the screens are prepared.

This is an important part of the process because a painting that appears to contain one continuous image may actually need to be broken down into many separate layers.

3. Printing

Once the screen is prepared, ink is placed onto it.

A squeegee is pulled across the screen, pushing the ink through the open parts of the mesh and onto the paper below. That creates one impression.

The paper is then moved or replaced, and the next impression is made. Registration becomes increasingly important as more colors are introduced because every layer has to sit in the correct position in relation to the ones already printed.

There is something very direct about the process. You can see the image being built, not simply reproduced.

4. Multi-color printing

This is where a screen print can become surprisingly complex.

Each color normally has its own screen and its own stencil. The colors are then printed one after another, with the paper carefully registered between impressions.

Two colors might overlap to create another color. A transparent layer can change what sits beneath it. An opaque layer can cover it completely. The order in which the colors are printed therefore becomes part of the artwork itself.

A screen print can have just a few colors or many more.

My Nothing for Granted screen print, for example, uses 29 separate color layers. Each color required its own screen, its own pass, and careful registration throughout the printing process.

That is a long way from thinking of screen printing as simply putting a painted image onto paper.

5. Cleaning and reclaiming

Once a print run is completed, the screens can be cleaned and prepared for another image. The remaining ink is removed and the stencil can be reclaimed so the mesh can be used again.

It is one of those parts of printmaking that rarely appears in the finished artwork, but it is part of the physical rhythm of working with screens.

Materials and tools used in screen printing

The basic equipment is fairly straightforward. The skill comes from knowing how those parts behave together.

The screen holds the mesh and stencil.

The mesh controls how ink passes through and contributes to the level of detail and ink deposit.

The emulsion can be used to create the stencil from separated artwork.

The squeegee moves the ink across the screen and through the open mesh.

The ink forms each individual color layer.

The substrate is the surface receiving the print. For fine art screen printing, this is commonly high-quality paper. Screen printing can also be used on fabric, wood, glass, metal, ceramics, and other surfaces.

For my own editions, paper is an important part of the finished work. My screen prints are produced on archival Fabriano Artistico cotton rag paper, chosen to meet the quality and longevity expected of a fine art edition.

What is a serigraph?

A serigraph is a fine art screen print.

The term became associated with artists who were using screen printing as a serious fine art medium rather than purely as a commercial printing method. The process itself remains screen printing. The context, intention, and way the work is developed are what matter.

You will therefore see serigraph print, screen print, and fine art screen print used when talking about this type of work.

A limited-edition serigraph is produced in a defined number of impressions, with the edition generally signed and numbered. Once the edition is complete, that particular edition is finished.

Color and layering in fine art screen printing

Color is one of the essences that holds the spark within screen printing and emerges as a useful medium for artists.

A single screen can create a strong, clean field of color. Multiple screens allow those colors to build on one another, producing combinations, overlaps, and changes in density.

For an artist working from a painting, color separation can become a form of translation. The original image has to be looked at differently. Which parts belong together? Which colors need their own layer? Where should one color sit over another?

My screen prints begin with that relationship between painting and print. The painterly qualities are once again considered through the structure of separate color layers, rather than simply being transferred as a single image.

How many colors can a screen print have?

No single painter can quite fixate on the number of colors. 

A simple screen print may use only two or three colors. More complex fine art screen prints can use dozens of screens. Every additional color brings another screen, another stencil, another pass through the press, and another registration to manage.

The 29-color Nothing for Granted is a perfect example to support my statement. The number mentioned there is not a gimmick. Each layer forms part of the final image, and the sequence has to work as a whole.

A brief history of screen printing

Stencil printing has much more conventional roots than the modern screen printing process. Stenciling has been used across different cultures for centuries, including established traditions of stencil work in Japan and other parts of Asia and the Pacific.

The modern screen printing process developed in the early twentieth century. Samuel Simon patented a silk-screen stencil process in England in 1907, after which screen printing expanded through commercial applications such as posters, signs, and textiles.

During the 1930s, artists in the United States began exploring the technique as a fine art medium. The term “serigraphy” emerged around this period to distinguish artistic screen printing from its commercial applications across various sectors.

The process became particularly visible through Pop Art in the 1960s. Andy Warhol's use of silkscreen became closely associated with images of celebrities, consumer products, and mass culture. Artists including Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns also explored what the process could do.

That history is useful because it shows how adaptable screen printing has always been. It can be highly graphic, painterly, photographic, commercial, or deeply personal depending on how the artist uses it.

Screen printing in contemporary New Zealand art

Screen printing has its own place within the history of printmaking in Aotearoa.

My own connection with the medium has developed alongside my painting practice in Auckland. For me, screen printing gives paintings a different way, a different dimension to exist. The work can retain the color, scale, and visual language of the original while being rebuilt through a very different physical process.

Each edition is hand-separated, and the screen printing process stays closely connected to how I work as a painter and printmaker.

Screen printing vs lithography

Screen printing and lithography are both established fine art printmaking processes, but they build an image in very different ways.

Screen printing pushes ink through a mesh stencil. Lithography works from a flat surface using the different behavior of oil and water.

The visual results can differ too. Screen printing is particularly well suited to strong blocks of color, layering, and crisp graphic areas. Lithography can produce a different range of marks and tonal qualities.

Neither process is simply a better version of the other. They give the artist different ways of constructing an image.

Screen printing vs giclée

The difference becomes much easier to understand when you look at how the image is produced.

A giclée print is a digital inkjet print made from a digital file. It can reproduce extremely fine detail and a broad range of color in a continuous digital print process.

A screen print is built physically. Each color is separated, placed on its own screen, and printed as an individual layer. You can often see the character of those layers in the finished piece.

I work with both screen printing and giclée printing, but each serves a different purpose and genre within my practice.

Screen printing vs digital printing

Digital printing works from a digital file and does not require a physical screen or stencil.

Screen printing introduces those physical stages back into the process. Ink passes through mesh. Colors are layered. Registration has to be considered. The paper moves through a sequence of individual impressions.

You can feel that difference when you look closely at a finished print. A screen print has a particular surface and presence because of how its ink is laid down.

For collectors, that physical process is part of understanding what they are buying. The print is the result of many decisions made during its construction, rather than a single digital output.