• Space to Print.
  A room, table, etc. Just anywhere you can set up a station to work.

• Somewhere to dry prints
  Formal drying racks / ball hanging racks, or just space your works on the couch.

• Ink Station made of glass, plexiglass, etc.
  I used an old piece of glass from a photo frame and taped it to a piece of wood from ikea.

• OR cheap ink station: wax paper taped to a surface

• Cleaning Agent (Medium Specific)
  Dish Soap & Water for Safe Wash, Vegetable Oil for Oil inks, etc.

• Rags / Shop Towels

• 1"-1 1/2" Putty Knives. Cheap option: Credit Card / Plastic Card
  For pushing around the ink.

• Razor Blade

• Ink Brayer. For screenprint, a ink squeegee.

• Phone Book / Magazine / Place to wipe old inks**

• IF DESIRED Waste & Reuse Ink Tin***

• Garbage to dispose of rags

• AND / OR Step Can to keep rags for safe disposal

• Ruler, heavy metal meter stick preferred

• Square ^ for making sure cuts are straight

• Newsprint / Cheap Paper

• Good Paper to Print On
  Talk to your local art store representative / research what your process needs.

You'll need to make a stack of paper to print on before you get anywhere near your inks to print.

There's a few different methods for 'cutting' paper:

1. Heavy metal ruler & ripping / tearing the edge

2. Cutting with straight edge knife & ruler

3. Paper cutter

Print professors seem to place 'tearing' the paper as the "king way to cut paper". It does give a nice, torn edge. But, when you mess up it's not easy to fix because you need a minimum width of paper to actually have it tear properly. Honestly, do whatever you feel suits your workstyle.

Easy at home options:
woodcut, linocut, speedycut, styrofoam, monotype/ monoprint.

Speedy cut is a softer linoleum. Styrofoam you emboss with a pen drawing, then add a handle at the backside. Two great intro to print options for kids. Cheap materials too.

Harder / more $$$ at home options:
letterpress.

You would need to purchase letter materials, own a lot of them, store them, & sort them.

Lino / Wood Pros:

• price. Tends to be cheap to do

• safety & easy cleaning. Safe wash oil inks that dissolve with soap and water are widely available for use that won't harm your health unlike traditional oil inks.

• portability. Portable and light

• Easy to find carving material. Matrix materials are easy to find at your local art store. You can even use vinyl floorboards.

• community. Common home medium, lots of artists practicing.

• lots of reference work. Very large social media presence.

• satisfaction. Sweet, juicy paper embossing.

• size. Can technically print as big as you want to without a press.

Lino / Wood Cons:

• not drawing to a product. You are carving the block, not 'drawing'. They're related processes, but not the same.

• labour. Physically taxing due to carving. Improper technique might mean you stab yourself by accident.

• no takebacks. If you mess up carving, it's there for good.

• horizontal flip. Unless you own an offset press, you need to plan for the horizontal flip.

• blunt injury. Stabbing yourself by accident when you put your hand in the wrong place and carve toward yourself rather than away.

Relief carving is super home friendly and has few drawbacks. For most, this will be their only option to print at home.

Monoprint Pros:

• ease of materials. If you already do print, you just need a flat plexi / copper / lino 'plate'.

• by hand or by press.

• painting! All the joy of painting without the time consumption.

• less heavily planned. I personally treat it like making quick sketches and as such, it really doesn't consume me in planning like a linoblock would.

This medium is great for experimentation and intuitive pattern making and creation. Layer by layer you add more elements quickly (or slowly) to make compositions... or you can paint a single image.

Monoprint Cons:

• not for making multiples. Seems to defeat the purpose of printmaking huh?

• prints do better with high pressure. The difference between non press printed & press printed monoprints can be very noticeable. You will not get the same depth of dark to light without a press.

• certain texture needs high pressure to print without shifting. You might find it hard to print object textures without a press.

• horizontal flip. If you paint with wrong proportions, you'll really notice.

• lack of print community. We're printmakers, not painters. I don't see a wealth of people doing monoprinting in the same way as lino, litho or other printers.

• painting. Don't they get all the credit already??? Don't join them.

Starting Tools Needed:

• oil inks (safe wash, water soluable, or etching/ litho)

• all the cleaning stuff mentioned prior

• Spray cooking oil

• Some kind of plate
  Acrylic, plexiglass, copper, flat plastic from containers - really anything smoothly, evenly flat and waterproof.

Spray Cooking Oil Use:
Inks on the plate dry out over time. Spray the plate with a light, even coat it with oil periodically to keep the ink wet. This said, too much will add texture to your piece or dissolve your inks. Cooking oil can also be used to thin out inks.

Fun Texture / Painting Stuff Makers:

• interior of honeycomb & regular cardboard

• sprinkled baby powder

• printmaker's tarlatan or sheer fabric

• paintbrushes

• q tips (great 'erasers')

• brayers of all sizes

• rags

• onion/ avocado bags

• leaves / plants / grass

• honestly sky's the limit. whatever you can find and put on a print bed to be pressed, you can probably ink up to print.

Kitchen Litho Pros:

• price... mostly. The tinfoil and drawing crayons can be pretty cheap depending on the quality you choose. Inks can be cheap if you can get them used or only use 1 type.

• ease of materials. Tinfoil, coca cola, regular kitchen drying rack... super easy to get!

• imprint by hand or by press.

• drawing! Replicates drawings true to sketch.

This is a tougher medium because of the nature of the etching and printing process of lithography, but highly rewarding to do. If you love drawing, you can get that drawn quality.

Kitchen Litho Cons:

• safety & harder cleaning. Lithography has to use oil inks - they're more toxic by nature. Fundamentally the medium works on the principle of oil and water resistance. Can't avoid this one.

• detail of drawing. You'll have to push the medium and see how much detail you're able to capture.

• relatively new medium, lack of community. There's not a ton of people doing this method, but it's ripe for experimentation!
  Let me know if you know a kitchen litho community!

• horizontal flip. as per usual, like all printing, gotta work backwards and know your proportions well!

Silkscreen Pros:

• commercially applicable. Can easily create graphic items (t-shirts, hoodies, socks, etc.) to sell en mass.

• can be lofi / cheap as hell. A silkscreen can be as simple as sheet fabric stretched over a frame. Or, buy industrial mesh count screens. Create designs with stencils or with photo emulsion.

• easy digital planning. Photoshop and silkscreen go hand in hand. Plan all your layers on photoshop, separate them into b/w or cmyk, then get them printed on transparent cells at your local printshop.

• can print pictures. Photographs are separated in to 4 layers (cmyk: cyan, magenta, yellow, black). Then, each layer is printed on top of one another creating the photograph.

Silkscreen Cons:

• 50/50 home friendly depending on your goals. If you want to set up a commercial venture with photo emulsion & printed cells for exposure of a screen, it's going to a pain to do if you don't have the right equipment and space for it. This said, people have been making silkscreen shirts from their bathtub for a long time. Once your screen has a design on it, it can be printed hundreds of times over.

• you need a dark room setup + storage for emulsion. No way around this - you need a place to dry screens and lay emulsion. Be ready to get messy.

• a full silkscreen setup is expensive and bulky. To do the full photo emulsion process efficiently, you're gonna need a lot of space, setup, and money for the equipment.

Basic Tools for Any Kind of Silk Screening:

• clear tape
  (packing tape for big screens, scotch tape better for small)

• squeegee appropriate to screen / design size

• silkscreen with correct mesh count for designs

• paper / fabric / surface you're printing onto

• optional: clear piece of flexible plastic
  (for preview printing before you silk screen onto your item.)

• x2 spatulas
  (for gathering ink off screens, scooping extra emulsion back into the bin, mixing colours, etc.)

• right kind of silk screen inks
  - Use fabric ink for appeal.
  Unlike regular silkscreen ink, it won't break under when washed right away.
  - For papers, premixed silk screen ink OR screen base plus highly pigmented acrylics.

Stencil Tools Checklist:

• does NOT require exposure setup

• straight edge knife; x-acto

• cutting mat of some kind

• water resistant flat material to make stencil out of
  (plastic sheet / overhead transparencies are best, but paper can work too)

Screen Filler Tools Checklist:

• does NOT require exposure setup

• Screen filler / drawing fluid
  For painting on screen; can make layer reductions prints this way.

Hand Drawn Cells Tool Checklist:

• Requires all emulsion exposure tools

• Very opaque liquid / marker
  - India Ink / Acrylic Paint mixture
  - Sharpie / other permanent marker

Starting Tools for Commercial Emulsion Setup:

For a advanced, semi/ commercial photo emulsion & silkscreen setup. Some of these will have different options based on setup.

Here's what a professional setup can look like at home. <link>

• a darkroom

• red light (for darkroom)

• photo emulsion

• photo emulsion trough
  (to put emulsion on screen)

• squeegee appropriate to screen / design size

• silk screen ink appropriate for usage
  (fabric/ regular screen base)

• optional: screen filler

• clear packing tape

• paper / fabric / surface you're printing onto

• pressure washer with fan attachment

• washout area
  (outside, or a deep sink, bathtub, shower, hose)

• overhead transparency sheets

• ^ printer of some kind for designs
  @ home = high quality laser printer
  OR go to a local printshop

• method to exposure silkscreens reliably*
  (UV light, exposure unit, the sun; getting screen from dark to light reliably)

• photoshop or other similar image editing software

• knowledge of using ^ to create designs and files

• proper silkscreen with correct mesh count for your designs**

• Water resistant flat material to make stencil out of (plastic sheet / overhead transparencies are best, but paper could work too)

• butterfly clamps / hinges of your choosing

• ^ wooden table to attach to

Stencil Pros:

• no exposure required.

• can print basic designs on paper, t-shirts, and otherwise.

• small production scale printmaking. (below 20-50 prints)

• easy introduction. Stencils are pretty easy to do and make great graphic images.

• lofi / cheap as hell. You can diy a great deal of the equipment for cheap.

• great kids activity. Easy way to introduce printmaking to kids.

Stencils are good for thick lined graphic images / clipart / graffiti styles. It is easy to make and cheap to do. Great as an introduction to print for kids.

Stencil Cons:

• not commercial friendly. Stencils degrade as they're used. There's often gaps between the screen, stencil, and fabric, ink which causes ink to get under the stencil and print onto the design.

• requires design to have 'bridges'; no free floating objects. When you cut out a stencil, the entire design has to stay as one object. You can't have 'islands' on your design. For example, if you wanted to print an O as a stencil, the middle round of the O would need to be connected by a bridge to the outer design.

• not friendly for small, detailed illustrations / designs. Detailed designs are hard to cut out and can be rife with ink bleeding problems. You need practice to be able to do this well.

2. Screen Filler and/or Drawing Fluid

Screen filler is used for blocking parts of a silkscreen; making areas where no ink prints. Drawing Fluid is used marking ink areas of a screen; areas where ink will print. Drawing fluid comes off a screen with warm water.

Screen Filler & Drawing Fluid Pros:

• no exposure required.

• can print basic designs on paper, t-shirts, and otherwise.

• small production scale printmaking. Below 20-50 prints. After this point, the screen filler can start to degrade from wear.

• allows for floating objects in designs. Unlike stencils, you can print an O as it is if you painted the screen filler like that.

• a painterly approach to print + reduction print possibilities. In videos they will copy a preexisting clip art design but you can paint whatever you want however you want. You can do reduction prints methods (lino/woodcut) with a more painterly approach.

• don't have to buy both. You just need the screen filler to block the screen. The drawing fluid just makes it easier.

Screen Filler & Drawing Fluid give you some of the notable benefits of photo emulsion silkscreen without the equipment needs. But, screen filler does degrade with each pull of the screen so it isn't great for large commercial applications.

Stencil Cons:

• screen filler degrades with use. When you're doing pulls on your screen, the filler does breakdown over time. you will probably have to fill in certain spots over again especially if the first application wasn't a thick coat.

• very handmade process. A pro and con. You can't just stick a digital image on the screen and get that exact image - you're tracing. You'll have a lot of handmade variance because of the screen filler application.

• possibly not friendly for small, detailed illustrations / designs. The limits of the detail of your design are the limits of your painting ability & praying the screen filler doesn't degrade / flake off quickly.

Screen Filler & Drawing Fluid Pros:

• hand made process. If you're a fan of what you can touch & feel, you'll be able to do the cell exposure process using hand drawn stuff.

• great for learning layering process. There's something about doing physical photoshop-like layers that really burns the idea into your head.

• non tech option. If you don't have access to a tablet and a printer, this is a great way to get into the process.

Hand Drawing Cells is incredibly inefficient but a great way to learn how layering works. It's finicky to get the black ink to lay thick enough to not expose without issues. Photoshop is a superior tool for planning. However, the hand made elements of this process allow might be better for you as a creator.

Stencil Cons:

• requires exposure.

• finicky to get black ink/paint opaque. Sometimes you don't put enough down, or it's too thin. This can run you into trouble with exposing.

• physically creating cells is just plain difficult. No way around the fact. Photoshop is decidedly better for planning layers and interactions.

Emulsion Pros:

• clean, crisp designs when done right. Emulsion has so many great applications. Designs can be printed any way you want with it.

• no 'bridges' in designs, unlike stencils.

• tech compatible. It's very encouraged to use photoshop or other digital technologies to help you use this medium.

• commercially applicable process / business. You can sell things you silkscreen onto and make tons of them. You can also get a job as a silkscreener.

• technically can be done at home.

Stencil Cons:

• requires exposure.

• technically can be done at home - needs space and a setup. This kind of process can be setup at home but demands a lot of space and equipment. Be prepared to invest into silkscreen if you plan on doing it, especially if you want large scale production.

• home setup will not be as efficient as commercial setup (aka, your poor bathtub is cover in emulsion scrap).

• requires chemicals, pressure washer / a very good hose. To reclaim screens, you will need to buy some chemicals for it. Screens can be cleaned with a hose or pressure washer; the latter is more efficient.