Print Process intermediate boldgraphicphysical

Screenprint Overprint

Opaque ink laid thick through mesh, one flat colour per pass, building depth by overlap.

What it does

Screenprinting lays a far heavier ink film than lithography, so colours are opaque and can print light on dark. There is no continuous tone: every colour is a separate flat pass through a separate screen, and the design must be built in layers from the outset. Warhol's Marilyn series and the gig-poster tradition both depend on this. Registration is achieved by eye against pins, so a slight offset is normal, and the ink edge is very slightly raised and visible in raking light.

The prompt

A four-colour screenprint of [Subject]. Each colour a separate flat opaque pass with no continuous tone anywhere, colours building depth where they overlap and multiply. Slight registration offset of about half a millimetre on one layer. Visible mesh texture in the large solids and a faintly raised ink edge. Printed light-on-dark on heavy black card stock.

Replace [Subject] with what you are shooting. Everything else is deliberate: the gear, stock and lighting are what push a generator towards this look.

Works well in

Midjourney, FLUX, Ideogram

Pairs with

Two-Ink Discipline Psychedelic Fillmore Poster

The Prompt Atlas

Every prompt here is a starting point. The Prompt Atlas is the full system: hundreds of production-ready prompts organised by outcome, with the reasoning behind each one so you can adapt rather than copy.

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