Long Beach City College offers a silk screen printing and printmaking class for students in the art department that allows them to make prints that they can reuse or sell in the future.
Printmaking and specifically silkscreen printing is mainly used for designs and print images on  T-shirts, bags, and ceramics.
Silkscreen printing is the oldest type of printmaking and it is the process of art that allows the artist to make multiple originals from one artwork which makes each piece different..
Christian Ward is the professor of the visual and media arts department in LBCC and began teaching printmaking and silkscreen printmaking in 2014.
“It has a specific look. You can make multiple of them and share with more than one person. I like the democracy about it,” Ward said. “You want to make multiple artworks to reach a big audience and a how versatile it is.”
Silk screening was made by the well-known artist Andy Warhol in which he used the process to make the one of his famous Marilyn Monroe art pieces.
The class also equips the students with the skills to print and make in their free-time so they can create prints of their own after the semester.
LBCC student Hugo Vasquez plans on selling his prints one day said. “I like expressing myself and getting creative and what I like about it is the lack of detail to be able to make many layers and to think more creatively about it.”
The class has a total of four projects being, self-portrait, dreamscapes, the world would be a better place, and an ambitious one.
Each student decides what they want to work on as long it is within the theme that is required which allows them to be creative and be more hands-on.
Student Marilyn Vorce explained the idea behind her project. “I am doing my project about substance and how the media portrays it as something stupid and funny. I personally experienced on how the media has portrayed it as funny and stupid when it should be something serious,” Vorce said.
The project “the world would be a better place if” is a theme which the students have to come up with an idea that they think is an issue in the world needs to be solved and create an artwork to print make.
“The hardest part of the process is time management, mixing print color, setting up the screen,” said Vorce an illustration major.
By the end of the class, the students must submit a portfolio of each of the projects they have done.The final might involve students in the class interchanging their prints to inspire each other on their artwork.