Trouble printing translucent colour for fine art.

[Printingcat]

Hello Everybody,

I am new to this forum or any screen printing forum for that matter so Hello!
Also not sure if this is post in the right section of your site so apologies if it is in the wrong place.

I am a fine artist, I'm self taught, I print screen printed mono prints, I don't really make any money so more of a passion than a career although I did do a fine art degree many many years ago. I use solvent based inks and water based inks often on top of each other.

For a long time now I have being trying to copy a type of printing I've seen where the artist use either many layers of translucent inks on top of each other and also where an artist has managed to produce work with a translucent fluorescent sheen on the paper. I've wasted masses of time and money trying to achieve these effects, so I am delighted to have found a forum that deals with screen printing on paper as thus far I have only found forum that are for t-shirt printing.

I have diluted "normal" inks and fluorescent inks with an extender called thixotropic varnish and with a thinner for my solvent based inks and I have diluted my water based inks with a medium and sometimes just water. However both produce unsatisfactory prints. The thixotropic varnish itself has a slight tone which when used with only a bit of ink ( or pigment) shows through and dulls the print. The thinners and to a certain extent the thixotropic varnish also tend to bleed under the screen because they are too thin, and leave print marks. They show the natural undulations of the paper and so do not give a nice even tone. When diluted to give a translucency/colour I would like they tend to look too weak. Similar problems occur with the water based inks. I'm sorry I do not know any of the technical terms for such things.

I have spoken to some ink manufacturers but they just try and sell me their particular systems without seeming to understand what it is precisely I'm trying to do and obviously its very expensive to set up with a whole new group of inks so I am reluctant to go ahead.

I could try and use some extremely smooth paper, which again is very expensive or perhaps use a really high thread count screen, but I am not sure any of these things will solve the problem. Is there any one here with experience of trying to achieve these effects?

I am currently using 120T screens I am sorry I am not sure if this is cm or inches I'm in the UK but I am not sure which convention we use.
Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers Cat