What is System3 screen printing?

July 01, 2022

Kerry Lemon takes you through the System3 screen printing kit from Daler-Rowney that she uses constantly for her work. Kerry's career as an artist has spanned over 13 years!

Introducing System3 Screen Printing

Introduction to Kerry Lemon

Hello!

My name is Kerry Lemon, I’m a Brighton based professional artist and I want to tell you all about the SYSTEM3 screen-printing kit.

I’ve been a professional artist for the last 14 years and I would love to tell my eight year old self that I get to be an artist - I cannot believe my luck!

Grounded in research and OBSESSED by diverse materials and scales, I create paintings, prints and collages and GIANT M O N U M E N T A L sculptures. My artwork and ideas are commissioned by architects, developers and luxury brands including; Fortnum & Mason, Marks & Spencer, Great Ormond Street Hospital, Virgin Airways, Sony Japan, Harrods, Historic Royal Palaces, John Lewis, The Times, BBC Wildlife, The National Trust, The LA Times, Elle Spain and SPACE NK China. You can find out more about me @kerrylemonart or www.kerrylemon.co.uk

Screenprinting

I do ALL my screenprinting from my (teeny) home studio and only use SYSTEM3 as it’s SO easy and intuitive. I want to share a bit about how I use it to give you confidence that no matter if you’re on the kitchen table, the corner of your bedroom or behind the sofa in the lounge, YOU can create professional hand painted screen prints from home. This has always been BRILLIANT, but especially during COVID it’s great to be able to keep making work without the need for complicated equipment, expensive materials, or even leaving your front door! I don’t even have a sink in my attic studio, so I take all my screens downstairs to our shower to wash them off. Lots of universities and professional studios use SYSTEM3 but it’s equally at home in your home.

Seven Different Strokes

Emperor Dragonfly

Tell us more about the System3 Kit

The SYSTEM3 Kit contains E V E R Y T H I N G you are going to need and it’s jam packed full of the best quality Daler Rowney products. I’m sick of kits that have poor quality product - especially brushes, but here you have a fabulous size 6 round (I always use either a 6 or 8 round for pretty much everything I do in the studio!). When you first get your brush it will feel a bit crispy - this is just a bit of watery size to hold the point of the bristles so… first things first… you need to swill this gently in clean water and leave (bristle side up) in a jar/ pot to naturally air dry. NEVER leave your lovely new brush standing in water or caked in dried paint! I clean my brushes in shampoo and cool water and some of my favourite brushes are over 30 years old! (so take care of them and they’ll really last!)

You’ve got FULL instructions in the kit and there’s even more online. You’ve also got 5x full sized SYSTEM3 paints in black/ white/ red/ yellow/ blue so you’ll be able to mix ANY colour you like. SYSTEM3 is really clever, it’s a high quality acrylic paint so you can just use it for painting (water it down so you get a watercolour effect or spread it thickly so it’s more like oils!) OR… you can use the mediums in your kit to transform your acrylics into screen printing inks! It’s really good value and very versatile. You’ve got 2x bottles of textile medium so you can screen print on fabrics (think T-Shirts/ tote bags pillow cases etc etc WHOOP WHOOP!) AND 1x bottle of paper printing medium (which is what we’re going to use today.)

What else is included in the kit?

You’ve also got a palette knife (which I also use for thick impasto painting techniques!) and a high quality squeegee. Again… take care of your squeegee as it will last and last. Make sure you clean it properly and keep it safe as you don’t want the rubber to get nicked as that will leave gaps when you do a smooth pull of the paint along the screen!

The final bits in your kit are the best bits. There's a bottle of BEAUTIFUL blue drawing fluid, which is what you’ll use to hand paint your design directly onto your screen. It takes a little getting used to as it’s sticky and a little like painting with honey! so I would suggest a quick practice on a scrap of paper first until you get used to it. The terracotta coloured screen block is what you’re going to use where you want the blank/ white background to be (ie all the negative space around your hand painted design).