[4oclockteetime]

Howdy,

I have seen a few shirts lately that seem to have a sunburst effect where the colors go from light to dark (yellow to orange to red) yet they seem to actually bleed into each other. I didn't know this was possible when screen printing shirts... Does anyone know how this is actually done? My guess is the ink used was waterbased (or possible discharge) because the graphic had a nice soft-hand feel about it... but then again, who knows. It could have been plastisol with a soft-hand additive. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Solmu]

Could have been DTG, could have been a halftone screenprint. A good screenprinter can get some pretty impressive gradients, but DTG is also becoming more common than before. So it could be either really.

 

[4oclockteetime]

Hi,

It definitely wasn't halftone because there was no pattern whatsoever and the people that made it were basically mass-printing with low quality for the sake of selling tees at swap meets and so on... The quality of the image was weak. Which leads me to believe that its not DTG (although, you may be right). If it was, I would have expected far greater detail from it...

 

[Solmu]

Inkjet transfer then? Hmm, except you said soft hand. It was on cotton? (that would rule out dye sublimation if so). DTG with a poor quality input file? Or an older DTG machine with poorer quality?

 

[4oclockteetime]

Is it possible to achieve this using discharge? There was a background image that definitely looked discharged because of the look of the garment but the graphic was rough around the edges. Almost looked as though the enlarged the and it just broke apart.

 

[Solmu]

Is it possible to achieve this using discharge?

Absolutely. But you ruled out halftone screenprinting, so unless it was printed as a split fountain...

 

[omnicow]

Split fountain was going to be my guess but you beat me to it. That's the technique of having multiple colors of ink in one screen so you can achieve a smooth gradient with only one screen and no halftones necessary.

 

[sunnydayz]

I agree with Solmu above about his comment that it could be dtg with a poor image. Dtg printers only print as good as the image that is fed to the machine, so it is possible for it to be dtg that was printed with a poor quality image.

 

[frankiko]

maybe airbrushed?

 

[4oclockteetime]

Thank you for the suggestions. I am fairly certain for what you have said here that it is either DTG with a very poor image (over a discharged tee) or the 'fountain' technique you've mentioned although the sunburst is circular so I'm not sure how it would have worked or how it would have been done... I will try the fountain process myself because it sounds really interesting...

Thanks again!