ImagesMagUK_Digital-Edition_Nov17

DECORATOR PROFILE

“I’m having the time of my life! Every ink needs a special approach because of its different viscosity, opacity, whatever. I love all the special inks; Rutland and Wilflex are my favourite inks to work with.” Striving to be special Milosj’s prints are particularly notable for their creative use of texture, with Milosj drawing inspiration from everything he sees. “I’ll be walking down the street and I’ll see this structure, this texture – I love textures,” he confirms. Gaining an understanding of how special effects inks work and how to use them is important for printers who want to set themselves apart in the future, he believes. “As DTG and transfers keep getting better and better, I think screen printing is not going to be special anymore. Every guy on the street can push a button and load and unload a shirt.” He happily hands out advice to those who ask on Instagram or via the Facebook groups he’s in, although he refuses to divulge detailed step-by- step instructions on how he creates specific designs. He thinks the key to understanding how inks work is experimentation, and so his advice aims to “tickle people into experimenting”. High definition prints are extremely popular right now, although Milosj isn’t

Milosj is a third generation screen printer who first printed at the age of six. He’s passionate about manual screen printing and combining different creative techniques

Rutland Inks, he had a column called ‘Ask Steve’. So I emailed him a couple of times; he made beautiful high definition prints. The guy is a genius. Eventually, someone asked if I was on Instagram and I said ‘No’. That was three years ago. I’m on there now!” Magna Colours noticed Milosj on Instagram and sent him a box of goodies to play with, while Ronald Van Kelst from PC Technology in Belgium now asks him to do live printing with speciality inks at trade shows. Wilflex first spotted Milosj’s talent when one of the company’s technical guys visited with his ink supplier. “We looked in each others’ eyes and we knew it – we were made from the same block: fanatical about inks. He asked if I could spare some shirts for a show, so I sent some to the States. From there they sent me some inks to play with and asked me to join the Wilflex Original programme.

likely to limit himself – there’s a world of different textile printing inks out there to be experimented with and mastered: “There are so many inks – reflectives, those that change colour with heat and light – and so many techniques; it’s brilliant. I am passionate about printing, about combining techniques, having the vision to see it from the artwork through to the finished style... I’ll never stop experimenting and problem-solving.” Which is excellent news for his many Instagram followers, and for the creative future of textile screen printing generally. www.instagram.com/madspecials

60 images NOVEMBER 2017

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