Monday 23 November 2015

Maintaing a screen printing practice

So I want to keep screen printing after I graduate and have already mentioned East London Printmakers' Studio which I want to purchase membership to. I'm looking at their prices list to see how affordable it is, and they also have a list of other materials vendors.

https://www.eastlondonprintmakers.co.uk/about-us/price-list/
http://www.cadisch.co.uk/screen-printing-inks/Default.asp?whichpage=2

Buying 500ml of System 3 acrylic seems to be chapter to get directly from these guys than even Cass Art which is surprising.

  • 500ml of System 3: £9.00 from East London Printmakers
  • 1l of System 3 binder: £10.84 from Cadisch. Slightly cheaper than buying 2x500ml from ELP (though it would probably be more economical to buy their 5l for the long run)
  • 500ml ink pots: £0.40 from ELP, though I can provide my own tuppleware. 
  • 3M brown tape x2: £2.49 from Amazon, cheaper than ELP
  • A1 200gsm Stockwell cartridge paper from ELP: £0.40 per sheet
  • A1 370gsm Lambeth cartridge paper from ELP: £.0.55 per sheet (if I want to make prints on thicker stock)
  • Emulsion from Cadisch: £2.87 per 100g, available at 900g for £25.89
  • Emulsion from ELP: £2.65 per 100g, available 1kg for £26.50
  • Therefore, emulsion is cheaper from ELP.


You can hire screens from ELP per day/week which I'll probably start out doing. Prices start at £2 going up to £7 depending on size.
You can pay per emulsion coating as well starting at £1.50-£2.70 depending on screen size

If I want to buy my own to save money in the long run:

At the very least, my first 2 coloured, A3 screen print using my own materials would cost:

  • screen hire/week = £8
  • 3x500ml of System 3 = £27.00 (3 because of the need to mix colours, though will probably require more)
  • 1l of binder = £10.84
  • 1kg of emulsion = £26.50
  • 1 x brown tape = £1.24
  • 10 x A1 stockwell cartridge paper = £4.00. This equates to 20 A2 sheets to print on for a 20-edition run
£77.58


If I don't bother buying my own emulsion and use it per coating, this becomes £51.08.
The thought of carrying around lots of ink and a kg of binder sounds cumbersome so it might not be worth the effort at the very beginning.

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