The honest answer is: look at the surface, not just the signature. A genuine hand-pulled screenprint carries physical evidence a digital print simply can't fake, no matter how good the file looks on screen. Ridges where layers of ink sit on top of each other. Occasionally, my own fingerprints, left from handling the paper mid-print. And if something shifts slightly between layers, I leave it. That's proof of the process.
Every screenprint I make gets built in passes, one colour at a time, pulled through a screen by hand. Each pass sits physically on top of the last, and if you run a finger across a finished print you can feel where the layers stack. That texture is the biggest tell. Even a screenprint pulled by a very good machine keeps that raised, layered surface. A digital print, however sharp, stays flat. Side by side, the difference is obvious the moment you touch either one.
Paradise Diamond Dust makes the point more literally than most. The diamond dust, fine glass particles really, gets worked into the surface by hand after the final ink layer, while everything's still wet. No machine does that part. Every grain settles slightly differently, which means every print in the edition catches the light a little differently too, even numbered the same.
Signing and numbering follows a pattern, though it's not perfectly rigid. On a numbered edition, the signature sits on the right and the edition number on the left. Originals, since there's no edition to number, get signed on the right only. Sometimes I hide the signature inside the artwork itself, or move it to the back, depending on how I want the piece to read. It varies by piece, deliberately, not by accident.
Every print also comes with a certificate of authenticity, separate from the print itself: my signature, a stamp of approval, the date it was made, the edition number, sometimes a handwritten note, all filled in by hand. The number on the certificate matches the number on the print. A number with no matching print is just a general document that could travel with any copy.
A real certificate of authenticity, filled in by hand.
The embossed stamp and hand-numbered edition, up close, on a different piece.
Let's Go Disco shows two more tells in one corner: an embossed stamp pressed into the paper, and the edition number written by hand rather than printed, 37 out of 100 on this one. The diamond dust isn't a coating either. It's mixed into the final layer of ink itself, seven layers deep, so it catches light differently depending on where you're standing. A varnish would just sit flat. This doesn't.
What happens when someone copies it anyway
A few years ago, someone was selling digital copies of one of my pieces, passed off as originals. My own followers spotted it before I did and flagged it to me. It fell apart under any real scrutiny, because it wasn't screenprinted at all, just a flat digital print pretending to be one.
I used to get properly wound up about it. These days it lands differently. My first thought is closer to confusion: why copy, when it's not that hard to just have your own idea? But mostly, if someone copies a piece of mine, I take it as a sign to move on and do something different. Copying something means it's finished being new. Time to make the next thing.
A few things people ask
The ink ridges are the most reliable tell, more than the signature. Even a machine-pulled screenprint keeps the raised texture of layered ink. A digital print stays flat regardless of how convincing the file looks.
Does the certificate actually prove anything on its own? Only because the number on it matches the number on the print itself, written by hand at the time of purchase.