Paul Felmer t-shirt printing process

Each distinctive design in Paul Felmer's extensive t-shirt catalog comes from original sketches drawn in 2B pencil and HB leads on 250g canson paper.

Ideas take shape through gestural doodles and are then digitized and edited in Adobe Photoshop.

Using CMYK and Pantone color separation, Ulano self-developing films are insulated on SBQ photopolymer emulsions, obtaining positive photoliths to manufacture screen printing screens.

Paul die-cuts polyester meshes from 43 to 230 threads/cm on aluminum frames, tensioning them with a pneumatic tensiometer.

It applies layers of photosensitive diazo emulsion that is insulated with a 5Kw mercury vapor lamp and the photoliths to create the printing matrices.

Each design requires its own set of screens to print on the 180g cotton t-shirts on a 6-station M&R rotary screen printing machine with pneumatic clamps, optical registration and microregulation.

Using plastisol-based screen printing inks and 70-90 Shore hardness scrapers,

Paul prints each color in limited editions, giving exclusivity and unrepeatability to each handcrafted screen-printed t-shirt.