Sarah Fielding of Heck Press explains how she created this stunning T-shirt print for Revolution Bike Park in Llangynog, Powys, which makes clever use of halftones to trick the eye!
The concept…
Revolution Bike Park is a downhill mountain bike park, set amidst the stunning scenery of Powys, Wales. The park was forced to close down in 2023 while infected larch trees were felled, damaging many of the original trails and leaving much of the park unrideable. To celebrate the park’s reopening in summer 2024, Sarah Fielding, founder of eco-friendly screen printing studio Heck Press, in Llanfair Caereinion, Mid Wales, printed a new range of designs, featuring a digger. “They had a lot of their forestry ripped out and had to start over, so the digger has become a bit of a symbol for them,” explains Sarah.
The full front print
The walkthrough…
This design was created by @stormstatic for @revolutionbikepark. We usually print this design a few times a year on a range of hoods, sweats and tees, including kids. We generally print about 300 at a time, but our last print run was 450.
⬇️
The separation was done by my print bud Alex @supremescreen. I then tweaked it to run on every colour of shirt, as the original separation was for black shirts only.
⬇️
A close-up detail of the halftone print
The design was printed using plastisol ink
⬇️
It was printed on an 8/10 X type MHM with seven screens. The LPI is 53 and all screens are 90T except the base white, which is on 77T. All the screens are thin thread mesh.
⬇️
The base white is magna V2 and all other inks are Rutland M3 plastisol. I usually run waterbased, but as this job is always tricky to print there are benefits from using plastisol here.
⬇️
We only have seven free heads on our machine and one flash, so I run the colours as base white, flash, base white, flash, orange, light green, dark green, grey, blue, flash, black. I print wet-on-wet where I can, adjusting angles, pressures and blades to prevent sticking, and running the press in rotation more than necessary.
⬇️
The ‘yellow’ sticker was printed using orange and green halftones
The front print and Heck Press branding
⬇️
We print mainly on AS colour classics and AS Colour Faded Relax Hoods, plus some Stanley stella and Anthem hoods. Although the tees always print beautifully, we sometimes struggle with the hoods as the surface of the Relax Faded is not the easiest to get clearance on without blowing out the detail.
⬇️
My favourite part of the design is the little yellow symbol on the digger. It looks yellow but this is actually made from green and orange halftones printed next to each other which tricks the eye!
Visit the Heck Press Instagram page
Do you have a standout print or embroidery?
Would you like to share your work in Images?
Then we’d love to hear from you.
