In an effort to keep up with my posting, I am writing this with utter exhaustion. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good day of printing. However, lots of standing on my feet and having a body that hasn’t been terribly happy with me lately has left me feeling not so awesome. Gotta carry on anyway and you bet your ass I’ll be back in the shop bright and early tomorrow.

Apologies for the camera phone pictures, but it didn’t really occur to me to bring my camera today. Overall printing went pretty smoothly. Here are some of the issues/thoughts that I had:

- Totally snafu’d the registration on this one! Printed out all the registration marks on the film, crop marks, etc. Basically anything to help me line up all of these layers. And then totally negated all that work by placing the film on the screen in such a way that none of those helpful things exposed. Haha. I think I managed ok by eyeballing it and using mylar as a back-up, but it could certainly be tighter. 
- Idea for registration next time: make the document in Photoshop roughly two inches bigger (all around) than the image, then print films with registration marks. This way the film isn’t so awkwardly large. And it doesn’t waste paper.
- This is the first time I’ve printed with TW-Graphics ink before for my own project. Well, partially. The process inks I mixed were Speedball colors and TW base (a 50/50 mix as I have been taught). It makes all the difference! The resulting print isn’t so…chalky and flat as typical, all Speedball prints. Not to say that the TW base makes it glossy. But it definitely has a slight sheen and it seems…denser? Still searching for the right words to describe.
- TW base makes the ink much more runny. Which is still manageable, but I think it might be contributing to the dot gain. (This is something I’d really like to tighten up in the future) It’s nowhere near as bad as the CMYK prints I did last year where I threw in too many complicated factors – artwork too snug on the screen, improper squeegee length, impatience (surprisingly better at this now!), not to mention my general inexperience. 

Overall, I’d have to say I’m pretty happy with how this came out. I think what makes me feel really good about this, is that I can tell that I’ve actually improved as a printer. Not to say that I am a master, far from it, but it is good to look back on old prints and see that I’ve learned from my mistakes. Here’s hoping the next few layers turn out equally as well! Now for some much needed sleep.