After some hit and missing printing onto the t-shirts I did
some more research and ended up getting myself some Essdee fabric inks along
with a Essdee fabric roller. What a difference that made, the ink is quite
different from the speedball ink I was using and the roller worked some much
better.
To do some more testing and experiments I stopped into the
local Hospice Shop and picked up 4 second hand t-shirts and 1 ladies top.
T-Shirt time again. I’m still struggling with getting consistent prints from using the Speedball Fabric inks. I watched a few videos and picked up a few tips, but still getting to light patches coming thought. A lot more experimenting required I think.
Takes a bit of getting use to using and I can see myself modifying
the stick with some felt or leather to soften up the stick part that your hand
rests on. I may even need to go for a
thicker dowl, but I’ll give the home made one a bit more of a workout. Main
thing is that it works and I’m not smudging the drawing.
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| Home made Mahl stick |
Started drawing again over Christmas, trying to improve my skills, especially with drawing the human figure. So found a random picture of a lady and got stuck in. Did a few small sketches which were terrible, and then busted out the old drawing books and got back into it with a A3 size drawing.
A couple of progress shots of the drawing so far, still got alot to do
Been a busy month and a bit with the end of the year
rolling in way to fast. Been back onto the Shina woodblocks and giving a
multi-block print a go. First test print using a water colour paint just to
make things even harder for myself ...hindsight and all that ... wasn’t the
best option. Sharpened all my tools and man did that make things easier, must
remember to do that more often.
Haven’t gotten around to trying out my standard inks, which is on the cards this weekend, but heres’ my first print. I over inked/painted it a bit with the water colours bleeding, but overall happy with how its come out so far.
Tonight’s effort was to finish off my Cad Bane carving and
do a first print. Needs a bit of tidying up but pleased with the results. Defiantly need to try out some blue tomorrow after I complete the clean-up.
Did up a small carving today of Star Wars Clone Captain Rex’s Helmet. Came out well, although I haven’t got the hang of printing on fabric yet. This is on a cheap T-shirt using Speed Ball Fabric ink, which I’ve only used a couple of times. It’s very different from my normal printing inks, so I’ll most likely be killing a few more t-shirts in the near future. Need to get some Blue ink to do a two tone version.
Star Wars Captain Rex T-Shirt Print
Now working on Cad Bane print converted from a nice drawing I found online.
I went back to doing some carving yesterday and finished off
my skateboarder in cubist style. First prints came out ok this morning. Noticed
that the image transfer using the Mod Podge has caused a little bit of rippling
on the wood in places so gave the ink transfer was a bit weird in spots, but overall,
I like it. I will have to see if a we bit of sanding can take out some of the
ripples.
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| Skateboarder |
Going to have to try out some multi-coloured prints with
this one over the next few days and even might try out some T-shirt prints with
it if the ripples come out with some sanding.
Got my next woodcut print all prepped for carving last night and ready to start. Thought I’d go for a bit of a cubist style image for a T-Shirt. Going to change it up a bit as I decided I didnt like the skateboard as much as i did on screen. I'll let the wood decide how it will end up.
Learning to embrace the new technology, I’ve been playing around with AI generation for a few different things both for work and personal. I managed to get it to create some nice images, haven’t quite got the hang of getting it to converting them into usable images to create some lino-cut prints from. Here’s a few that came out rather nice. Pretty crazy what it can generate.
Today I took my first go at printing my largest ever Lino carving. The Feather is 1150mm in length by 600mm which was a bit of beast to handle in printing. My printing bed is 600mm x 1200mm, so was basically as big as I can print. Then using a paper sheet cut from a roll of Fabriano Accademia which is 1.5m long, the physical sizes was a bit of a challenge, so I did a dry run first to get the order and process on how to handle the paper. Using the Cranfield inks are just so nice, mixed with extender and wax dryer they don’t dry to fast and with the size of the print and multi colors and mixes I was using, I didn’t need to rush. So overall I’m pretty pleased with the outcome of colors, even with the learning curve of printing such a large print, there is always more things to learn. I’ll need to cut away a few more sections that were picking up a bit too much background chatter and work of my blending of colors.
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| Ink bench preped and ready to go. |
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| Feather (600mm x 1200mm) |
Went back and cleaned up my Waterfall Landscape carving and printed off a few more using the Cranfield inks which I am really loving now that I’ve got it matched to some good paper. Mixed up some of my own colours with some wax drier and extender and getting some really nice prints now.
Forgot to post about my last Shina board print which I finished the first
print run just before starting on the feather project. First Print came out ok,
I was expecting the chatter in the background and wasn’t shaw how it would turn
out…. Don’t quite like it that much, so going to go back and carve it out more
and reduce it, not remove it all.
Still on the fence if I like Shina board more than lino
Been
busy planning and starting on my largest linocut print to date, its 1200mm x
500mm. Took a few weeks of trying out different papers that came in large rolls before
taking the plunge and buying a roll. Ended up going with Fabriano Accademia
Drawing paper that comes in a 1.5m x 10m roll, for just over $100, so that
should keep me going for a while. All the
time testing small sheets of paper I’ve been slowly working on the feather
carving.
Picked up a really large permanent marker which makes checking my carving much easier. Been steady progress so far, so should have finished the carving in another week or so.
Managed
to get a really nasty sinus infection that flattened me for a week or so, only
just coming right now. I did get a bit of work done on my largest linocut to
date and pulled a print off it yesterday. Still has quite a bit of cleanup work
to do on it but it’s coming along nicely. It’s also my first landscape style
print.
My
father also made a really nice handle for my restored and converted mangle press.
Trying out the second Shina
board I got a months back, this time carving an image that I transferred onto
it with the Mod Podge. Being a large area and not as detailed compared to my
last one using the Mod Podge method, it really worked well. Found carving it
much easier this time around after sharping my tools, which always helps.
I got inspired from a picture
on my physio's wall of the muscles of the body, then found some illustrations
online in different poses to use as reference. Haven’t made any prints of
it yet, but pretty please how it’s come out so far.
Another small lino cut, 100mm x 100mm based off an image I created in AI and then transfered to the lino using the Mod podge method.
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| Valkyrie |
So my second attempt at using Mod
Podge Matte-Mat-Mate as an image transfer to the Lino worked out quite well.
The image transferred really well and leaving it for 24 hrs to fully dry before
using water and rubbing away the paper seemed to work the best. Just have to
take it slowly and not get it to wet gave the best results.
The one issue I did have is
with a small detailed 100mm x100mm square was the thin coating of Mod Podge
with the image in it, started lifting as I carved, making it rather difficult to
see the patterns and lines so I ended up guessing where I was going in some
cases. Once I carved out the main image I just removed the pealing mod podge
and free handed the rest. The end result came out rather well.
I also did a bunch of paper tests of different cheap papers I have at the moment and a couple of specific way more expensive printing papers on my Mangle press. I then tested some of my home made paper and quickly found I have to prime my paper first as the surface becomes to sticky and parts tend to lift as you remove the paper from the printing block. All a fun learning curve
Also been doing more AI
generated art and tried out a transfer method to a bit of lino using Mod
Podge Matte which I'd seen done in a YouTube video. Took a couple of goes to
get the method right. The real test will be how the Mod Podge changes the
carving of the Lino.
With a very sore thumb after trying to grind it off the other day I'm on a slow and easy for the next while. So did a bit more drawing on my first A3 sized lino cut of a New Zealand Falcon.
After some hit and missing printing onto the t-shirts I did some more research and ended up getting myself some Essdee fabric inks along w...
