It’s All About The Layers, Not The Dots
This is the big one. The fundamental difference.
A standard digital or giclée print is made by a printer head spraying thousands of microscopic dots of ink (usually cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) onto paper. From a distance, your eye blends these dots to create the illusion of solid colour. It’s clever, but it’s still an illusion.
Screen printing is the complete opposite. We don't do dots. We do layers. For every single colour in my design, a separate screen (a mesh stretched over a frame) is prepared with a stencil of that part of the image. Then, I physically pull a thick, vibrant layer of ink across that screen with a squeegee, forcing it onto the paper. One colour, one layer at a time. The result isn't a collection of dots sitting in the paper; it's a tangible, opaque film of ink sitting on top of it. You can often see and even feel the texture. It has a physical presence that a digital print just can’t replicate.
The Colour Conundrum: Mixing vs. Mimicking
Ever tried to print a really vibrant orange or a sharp fluorescent pink on your home printer? It probably came out looking a bit muddy and sad. That’s because your printer is mimicking that colour using its limited palette of four inks. It’s doing its best, but it’s a compromise.
In my studio, there’s no compromise. If I need a specific, punchy orange for a print, I don't click a colour picker. I get out my pots of pigment and I mix it by hand until it’s perfect. This means I can use inks that digital printers can only dream of – searing neons, shimmering metallics, incredibly opaque whites that pop right off the page. The colour you see on an Oli Fowler Art print is a solid, bespoke, hand-mixed pigment. That’s why the vibrancy is on another level. It’s the real deal.
The 'Perfectly Imperfect' Human Element
A digital printer’s goal is uniformity. Every single print that comes out is a perfect, identical clone of the last. There's a cold precision to it.
Screen printing is a performance. The amount of pressure I put on the squeegee, the slight shift in how the paper is aligned, the humidity in my London workshop that day – it all has a tiny, subtle effect. This means that while every print in a limited edition is almost identical, they each have their own unique character. A tiny variation in the ink deposit here, a minuscule shift in registration there.
These aren't flaws. They’re the ghost in the machine. They're the evidence that a human being, not a robot, made this thing. It’s the fingerprint of the process, and it’s what makes each print a unique piece of art, not just a reproduction.
So when you buy a screen print, you’re not just buying a picture to stick on your wall. You’re buying the layers of ink, the bespoke colours, the time, the skill, and those little human imperfections that give it life. It’s a piece of a craft, made with care.
See the difference for yourself. Have a browse through the prints in the store and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.