ILTS Visual Arts (214) Content Area Practice Exam

This describes screen printing, which uses a mesh screen and a squeegee to push ink onto a surface. A stencil sits on or is applied to the screen to block ink in certain areas. The stencil can be created with a thick liquid that hardens to seal off parts of the mesh, so ink only passes through the open areas when the squeegee pulls it across the screen. The result is that the ink is transferred onto the substrate where the stencil permits, producing the image.

This process is different from intaglio, where ink sits in incised grooves on a metal plate and is transferred under pressure; from lithography, which relies on oil and water interactions on a flat surface without a mesh stencil; and from relief printmaking, which uses a raised surface to hold ink and transfer it to paper. The key feature here is forcing ink through a fabric mesh with a blocking stencil, which defines screen printing.