Fine Art Screen Printing

Screen printing offers a depth and richness of colour unmatched by Giclee (digital inkjet) reproductions. Mission Print has gained a wealth of experience in printing for leading graphic artists and street artists over the last 13 years.  We have no minimums to our fine art prints, typical editions usually range from 50 to 250. We always recommend sampling before we run your edition. By doing so we can make fine adjustments to your colour references, correct unsightly overprint issues and confirm border widths. Our large format Agfa image-setter and efficient screen makers mean new screens can be made within the hour.

Work with our printers to develop your project

We take a very hands on approach to working with our clients. Artists are able to spend time working alongside our friendly and knowledgeable print staff to develop their ideas. This process can take as little or as long as you need. If you’re coming from outside of the Midlands we can arrange accommodation.  We offer papers and boards from a wide range of paper merchants, these are listed in more detail in the Costings Guide. Our full range can be seen at our resource room in our Birmingham offices, alternatively we can send you our swatch selection that includes our more commonly used papers. The inks we use are custom made for us by our suppliers in order to get the best results on the papers we use. We use water based, solvent and UV inks and varnishes to achieve the finish that you want.

Lithography

We run a B2 5 Colour Heidelberg Speedmaster which delivers beautiful 200 LPI fine detail in CMYK or spot colours. We can combine with the depth and richness of our Screen Printing for stunning dynamic prints.

Giclee Prints

A high quality digital inkjet print using 11 colours. Our Epson 7900 gives outstanding results. This technique is ideal for smaller editions of multicolour art.

Creative and Archival Papers

We buy in papers from over a dozen different suppliers to give you a rich choice of papers from around the world. Our range includes mould-made, uncoated recycled and graphic papers and boards each in a range of sizes, weights and colours.   The mould-made papers we use are made from 100% cotton. The fibres are ground up and mixed with water to an even pulp. The pulp is passed into a vat containing a rotating cylinder mould. As the cylinder rotates the fibre forms into a matt on the outside of the cylinder. This matt of fibres is couched off onto a felt and removed for furthur processing. The outer edges of the mould are covered by a removable frame called a deckle. Fibre seepage under the deckle give these papers their “deckled edges”, a ragged gradation down to nothing.

Most clients wish to maintain this natural edge on their editions. This does pose a challenge to our printers as they don’t have a defined right angled corner from which to register. We do have techniques to overcome this but they do add considerable time to the print process. For artwork requiring intricate registration we may need to trim the deckles off. If you do intend to maintain the deckled edges on your paper consider the dimensions and borders of your artwork as obviously we can’t alter the paper size. Mould-made papers are commonly supplied at 56 x 76 cm, 76 x 112 cm or 80 x 120 cm.  Arches 88 is our most popular mould-made paper. Developed in France as silk screen paper it has a very smooth surface. It is deckled edged, acid free, 100% cotton, watermarked and waterleaf.   Velin Arches provides a good textured alternative to Arches 88 and its available in wide range of sizes and comes in a white, cream or black.    Somerset manufacture an impressive range of UK mould-made papers. We tend to use Somerset Velvet which comes in White, Soft White and Black.

In keeping with our environmental policy we’ve always encouraged our clients to chose from the now broad selection of 100% recycled papers suitable for fine art reproduction. The Cairn range offers a smooth yet natural feel and comes in white, cream and buff. For a raw, chunky recycled feel we would recommend the Cairn board range or versatile Testliner. Alternatively the Colourset range of 100% recycled smooth graphic papers offers a broad palette of 20 rich colours.   As we’re no stranger to commercial graphic screen printing, we’re fully versed in the creative papers on offer from the larger UK paper merchants. The Keycolour range offers an impressive colour choice over many weights and sizes. GFSmiths colourplan range offers an unrivalled x colours combined with x embossings. Their minimum order of 25 sheets of any of their papers makes them a popular choice if you’re looking for something different.

Speciality Inks

We offer a range of ink effects to enhance your project. We print UV inks and varnishes in house. Glitters, Fluoroescents and Metallic inks are also available.