Punched Newsprint

I wanted to give the newspaper stencils another go, and this time doing something with finer details. I forgot to take pictures of my stencil before I used it, but I punched small holes in a piece of newsprint from a quick sketch I did. Here is the stencil after being inked (the small holes worked like perforation and made it hard to pull the stencil away intact, especially since the newsprint was soggy as well).

[ stencil after being used ]

My regular black ink is definitely thinner and runnier than the inks I had used before. This was good because it was easier to push around and easier to coat the screen in only one pass. The first print, just on some blank newspaper, turned out alright. The ink passed through the small holes just fine, but my stencil was short at the bottom and I didn't have it blocked, so ink got squeezed out the bottom.

[ print one ]

The second print, however, was a bit of a surprise. Since the ink was thinner, a lot more ended up squeezing through the screen. I actually like the effect of it on this print, though.

[ print two ]

I moved onto some different paper that I had colored with watercolor pencils. This third print also had a lot of extra ink squeezing out, but these areas of black just kept growing.

[ print three ]

I started adding new chunks of newspaper underneath to try to help some of the leaks, but they really didn't work. Also by this point, the ink started to sink through my stencil, since the ink was much runnier and wetter than the previous inks I used and since newsprint is thin. This made kind of a gray effect, such as in the area under the mouth in this fourth print.

[ print four, with ink soaking through stencil ]

By this time, I'm not really liking the effect that's happening. By the time I got to this last print (maybe six prints?), the stencil was really weak, with ink soaking through everywhere, and plenty squeezing out in unwanted areas as well.

[ last print ]

Overall, this experiment was not a success, although I do like the second print on plain newsprint. I think it was a combination of the newsprint being thin for a stencil and the ink being less viscous than would be ideal for screen printing. I think for the future, if I want to use this black ink, I'll have to figure out a way to thicken it or find a better way to block the screen.