easy collagraphic printing process

Quick Collagraphic Printing

1. Cover a piece of wood or firm cardboard with double-sided carpet tape.
2. Attach flat objects (like plastic foam and found objects) to the the taped surface.
3. Cover the surface with the painting medium of your choice.
4. Press a piece of paper over the painted printing plate (use a rolling pin for increased pressure!).

Image Tranfers

I'm a 'lazy' artist so here's my 2 cents about image transfer processes...
I've had good results doing inkjet transfers with a process a little bit 
different than your processes. Here's my 'simple' process:

1 - PRINT
1a) print high contrast B&W image(s) on a sheet of deli sandwich paper (I 
found a box at MENARDS.) 
OR 1b) print on cheap printer paper that's nice and thin - not the good 
paper it's too thick
OR 1C) print on a transparency.

2 - GESSO

2a) apply medium-thin layer of tinted gesso to substrate (canvas, canvas 
boards, canvas paper, watercolor paper, pastel paper, cardboard, wood, panel, 
etc)
Fyi, the more gesso you apply, the longer it will take to dry. And I don't 
want to wait - need instant gratification...

2b) dry gesso using your heat gun for 1 minute or so. You can tell when it 
has dried, it turns from glossy to matte - gesso dries really fast! So I 
keep huge water bucket (I think I got it in the kid's section at Michael's 
craft store) nearby to soak my gesso tools in while I'm working.

3 - BURNISH
3) burnish image onto dry gesso.

4 - SEAL
4) apply matte medium, or soft gel gloss medium, or clear gesso all over 
and air dry, or dry with heat gun

REPEAT (optional)
5) repeat steps 2 -3 several more times. (I like to build up at least 7 
layers of gesso, glazes, and paint in my art pieces. Seems to give great 
depth.)

Notes: 
1: Used an Epson large format printer that I was lucky to buy for $100 
from a scrapbook store that was closing. Never paid attention to what type of 
ink it uses.

2: When I used transparencies, I printed them way in advance - it was 
months later before I used some of them. And the image came off fine when 
transferring. My transparencies are from Staple office supply store.

3: Tried this process with tinted clear gesso, because I LOVE clear gesso! 
But the transfer did not look as good as when I used white gesso that I 
had tinted with fluid acrylics. Here's a blurb I just found on the physics 
of gessos at _http://www.dickblick.com/categories/gesso/#acrylicgessos_ 
(http://www.dickblick.com/categories/gesso/#acrylicgessos) 

4: Used 'Liquitex' gessos for image transfers. Never tried 'Golden' gessos 
for transfers. Mostly I just use Golden gessos for 'gessoing', so far....

5: Not claiming to be the image transfer expert. There's probably a 
million different ways to do image transfers. This is just my result - I spent a 
whole day testing different media. Probably you should do some tests too, 
if you haven't already. My tests were done in a little art journal that I 
use specifically for testing supplies.


6: Steps 1a and 1c are easy-peasy. Just burnish the image onto the tinted 
gesso using your bone folder, or spoon, etc. But step 1b required WAY more 
work than I normally want to do. I had to soak off the paper by gently 
rubbing for several minutes...BOR-ING! zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

7: Found lots of youTube videos on the 'net a while back about image 
transfers, too that were helpful.

8: Bought a package of TAP (Transfer Artist Paper) but haven't tried it 
yet...Also, have not tried ironing processes yet...

9: gesso was custom tinted by me with a couple drops of fluid acrylics from 
an eye dropper - I used 'Golden'. But you could buy already tinted gesso.

10: When I want to apply thin layers of gesso, I use a palette knife, or a 
4" squeegee or a giant 8" spackle trowel - depends on how big an area I 
want to gesso, and how much 'texture' I want in the gesso. The trowel makes 
the gesso super thin and flat. The palette knife and squeegee make it thicker 
with some dimensional lines that I sometimes like in a piece.

Hope this helps!

Peace,
Mary Lou 'LuLu' 
Please visit my art BLOG when you have a moment or 2: 
_www.lulu-too-beaucoup.blogspot.com/_ (http://www.lulu-too-beaucoup.blogspot.com/) 

There is 1 message in this issue.

Topics in this digest:

1a. Re: Question: Painting with Acrylic and Image Transfers 
From: jacqui

Message
__________________________________________________________
1a. Re: Question: Painting with Acrylic and Image Transfers
Posted by: "jacqui" jdmosaics@optusnet.com.au jdmosaics
Date: Mon Aug 2, 2010 3:22 pm ((PDT))

Hi Fabian, a quick and dry way to do multi image transfers is to print 
your image onto T-shirt transfer paper- layer them one over the other (off- 
set each one over the other to get an interesting image) then iron once..if 
you get my drift? You can also do this one at a time but be very careful 
not to move your iron (no steam) press only onto the transfer with the cover 
sheet that comes with the paper or use silicon baking paper as a protective 
cover when pressing with hot iron...you can build up quite a good 
muli-image this way sorta like the layers in a faux photo shop digi work...hope 
this helps. 
Have a play using clear black images and when you get the hang of it play 
with the colour images and black ones over them..looks great..I will try 
and get a photo of some of my work and post soon.

cheers
Jacqui