There’s No ‘Undo’ Button Here

That little moment in the studio gets right to the heart of what makes a screen print different from something spat out of a digital printer. When you’re dealing with a digital file, perfection is the goal. Everything is aligned to a pixel-perfect grid. If something’s wrong, you hit Command-Z. Easy.

Screen printing is a physical performance. It's me, a squeegee, a mesh screen, and a pot of thick, vibrant ink. It’s a dance. And sometimes, you trip. Sometimes the paper shifts a fraction, or the ink is a bit thicker than yesterday, or the London humidity decides to have a say in things. There is no undo button. What happens on the paper, stays on the paper. And that's where the magic is. It’s not about producing identical clones; it’s about creating a family of prints, where each one has its own tiny bit of personality.

A Real Conversation with Colour

Let’s talk about that red ink for a second. It wasn't just 'Red' from a dropdown menu. I mixed it myself, adding a touch of magenta, a hint of orange, tweaking it until it felt like the exact, nostalgic red of a double-decker bus on a sunny day. When you buy a screen print, you’re getting a solid layer of that specific, hand-mixed colour. It sits on top of the paper, proud. It has a texture, a presence.

A digital print, or a Giclée, is an illusion. It’s thousands of tiny dots of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink sprayed by a machine to trick your eye into seeing a solid colour. It can look great, don't get me wrong. But it’s a different beast entirely. It’s a photograph of a colour, whereas a screen print is the colour itself.

The Fingerprints Are the Point

That misregistered bus print? I kept it for myself. It hangs in my studio as a reminder. It reminds me that the human element is the whole point. The slight variations, the texture of the ink, the ghost of the process – that’s not a bug, it’s a feature. It's the proof of life in the print.

When you buy a piece from Oli Fowler Art, you're not just buying a picture to hang on your wall. You’re buying a story. You're buying the hours spent mixing the ink, the physical effort of pulling the squeegee, and even the happy accidents that can't be replicated by any machine on earth. You're buying something with a bit of soul pressed right into the paper.

So next time you look at a hand-pulled print, look closer. Find those tiny ‘flaws’. They’re not flaws at all. They’re the signature of the artist, telling you that this was made with care, by hand. And for me, that's what makes it art.

Fancy owning a piece with its own unique story? Have a look around the shop and see what catches your eye.

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