Bubble Eye - CMYK Spot Colour Screenprint

Screen printing's four-colour process — cyan, magenta, yellow, black — usually lives in magazines and mass production. Here it's stripped back, hand-pulled through five separate screens onto Somerset satin paper.

The CMYK dither technique builds colour through dots. Not the smooth blends you get from mixing inks, but something grittier. More honest about how it's made. Each of the five layers adds depth — the cyan base, the magenta mid-tones, the yellow highlights, the black detail, then a final colour layer that pushes it beyond standard process printing.

This isn't about perfection. It's about what happens when you take an industrial printing method and make it entirely by hand. The dots align differently each time. The pressure varies slightly across each pull. Thirty prints, but no two exactly alike.

The bubble eye itself — part biology, part alien, part machine — suits the process. Something that shouldn't exist but does. The dither technique creates texture across the surface, depth in the shadows, a quality you can't get from digital printing or lithography.

Made in 2022 in the same Kimpton studio where everything gets made. Somerset satin paper because it holds the ink without fighting back. Five layers because that's what it needed. Edition of thirty because that's how many I pulled before the screens started breaking down.

Details

5-layer CMYK dither screenprint on 320gsm Somerset satin paper, 500x700mm. Limited edition of 30, signed and embossed. Sold unframed.

Care

Keep away from direct sunlight and moisture. Frame with UV-protective glass if you want it to last.

Shipping

Wrapped in acid-free tissue and shipped in a sturdy cardboard tube. Free UK shipping. International available.

This is for people who want to know how their prints are made. Who care about process as much as image. Who back the person making the work, not just the work itself.