Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Samples of digital printing onto diverse surfaces.

This is a sample library of some of the surfaces I have attempted to print onto...
Things we can easily print onto now:
cheap paper (can give good results when treated with a digital ground)
watercolour paper - various weights
Tyvek
waxed paper
cheap aluminium foil
acetate
brown paper
paper bags
plastic table cloth covering
plastic table cloth covering with applied muslin
skin of acrylic paint
skin of acrylic gel
aluminium sheet
brown paper
acetate with gel medium applied
standard fabrics - silk, organza, hessian, canvas
ironed bubble wrap
plastic bags (various qualities)
screen printer's plastic
dyed fabrics (eg., rust stained silk)
AND THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING...
1 Rough watercolour paper - Digital ground (DG) gloss clear
2 Calico, raw, not washed - DG gloss clear
3 Tyvek before heat treatment - DG non porous
4 Hessian (quite dark colour hessian) - DG gloss clear (right) DG white mat (left)
5 Cotton mix (rust dyed before printing) - DG clear gloss (left) DG not coated (right)
6 Organza - Where there is detail DG non-porous was used (centre elsewhere ink has spread and blurred)
7 High quality plastic bag - DG non porous (there is also a red rectangle where bag was printed red, and the roller marks can be clearly seen = NOT GOOD, these were later eliminated using plastic wedges under the wheel to lift them off the 'paper' as it fed through)
8 Normal Aluminium kitchen foil, crinkled and rolled prior to printing - DG non-porous
9 Waxed paper, prepared using shibori roll - DG non-porous
10 Rough water colour paper with gloss gel medium prior to printing - DG non-porous
11 Screen printer plastic - DG non-porous (roller marks lift slow drying ink = NOT GOOD! (rollers lifted in later samples as described above, see below)
12 Heavy table cover plastic - DG non-porous
13 Heavy table cover plastic with muslin applied using gloss gel medium before printing - DG non-porous
14 Acrylic paint (white) skin - DG non-porous
15 Bubble wrap thread sandwich - DG non-porous, some areas cleared of non-dried ink after printing
16 Screen printers plastic with muslin applied with gloss gel medium before printing - DG non-porous
17 Acetate sheet - DG non-porous (this surface can be used as a fine skin to apply to other surfaces (see later)
18 Frosted plastic (bag) - DG non-porous (right) no coating on left (ink extremely slow to dry but did dry eventually)

I will add more examples soon...

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Digital Ground 1


With an image (taken with my mobile phone ) of the pots at Calgary Airport that I am quite taken with... I printed onto acetate which had been textured with Golden gloss media and then printed on Golden's non-porous ground. Do you think if I mention their name enough I might get some free samples? Now on to stitch.

It snowed!



I think I can feel a series coming on.
Great stimulus for the shibori work and digital printing that I am doing
So frustrating being held up by lack of material and my inability to get technical with the printer. One doesn't mess about with a costly machine like that without concern.