I have completed my on-line beginners course in the art of photo-encaustic (combining photography with encaustic, or hot wax painting). I have really been bitten by the bug and love the idea of combining my photography with other modalities, which in addition to wax painting includes the use of oil paints, pigment sticks, oil pastels, dry pigments etc., to make three dimensional works while getting my hands a little dirty. I have signed up for some more advanced courses on the topic as well.

There are three main techniques (at least) in which photography can be combined with encaustic. These include the following:

• Mounting your photograph onto a board (masonite is the cheapest) or a cradled wooden panel (more expensive, but better looking and a bit easier to work with) and then coating with molten wax. The surface can be made smooth or textured. You can then enhance the photo with any type (as long as it is encaustic compatible) of pigment, much like hand coloring a photograph.

• Printing on tissue paper and then taking a multi-colored wax/pigment background that you have constructed and embedding the tissue paper into the background and coating it with clear wax. The absorption of the wax by the paper makes the white (non-printed area) visually disappear into the wax, which can then be enhanced with various pigments if you so choose.

• Preparing a multi-colored wax/pigment background and then, using any of a number of photo transfer methods, transferring the ink from the print onto the wax followed by enhancement as you so desire.

These three techniques can be combined and layered within the piece. Physically layered, not Photoshop layered :)

What you end up with is a truly unique 3-D multi-media piece, though I will be the first to say that there is a moderate learning curve both to handling the wax as well as to the painting with pigment part. But I have slowly been getting better. The final product is typically not displayed under glass, but, rather, in a floater frame, much like a canvas print. If the piece is on a cradled wood panel you need not even use a floater frame if you would prefer not to. You can simply paint the side panels and hang/display the panel itself.

I am demonstrating here a piece that was a failure per se, because I was attempting to learn the tissue paper technique. Alas, at the time, I had no tissue paper (some is on the way) so I printed on a very thin inkjet paper, but apparently not thin enough, as the paper did not become nearly invisible once embedded. So I made the best of the situation and hid the paper edges with pigments and ended up with something that is quite different than I had planned. It is quite dark and a bit creepy, not at all like most of the work I do, but I just followed where it took me.

As I delve more deeply into this and continue to improve, I will show more examples of what I am able to produce along the way. If anyone has any interest in or questions about what the process entails, I would be glad to either answer or write some more detailed posts.

Sometimes it’s difficult to come up with photographic projects, and, at other times, you aren’t doing too much of anything and they just pop into your head. This is an example of the latter.

For the last year or two, I have been on this 10,000 steps-a-day kick, which I have been following religiously, rain or shine. Sometimes I walk close to home and, at other times, I take a short ride and walk in a different neighborhood. I was recently taking a walk in Lawrenceville, PA, and wandered into a very large, historic cemetery. It’s a place that I have been to just a few times before and have even photographed once or twice.

But this time, as I was walking, I happen to notice that among the more typical headstones, those with a name and a ‘born on’ and ‘died on’ date, there were also some headstones that were extremely open-ended in a way that allowed a passer-by to almost construct a story. And it dawned upon me that this is much like a photograph in that a photo also has a limited ‘frame’ in which a story can be told; a limited space and time in which to grab and hold the viewer’s attention.

Wouldn’t that make an interesting project, headstones that seem to entice the viewer to imagine the story behind them? In order to remind myself of the project, I took a few cell phone shots since I didn’t have my ‘real’ camera with me. For example, there is a story here and it isn’t a good one.

"The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case."

Chuck Close

Perhaps the most important aspect of Close's advice is that it actually works! I think the best way to get out of a creative rut is to just force yourself to photograph whatever is around. Before long you may find yourself looking at things differently.

Well you sort of gotta’ love fall. I mean I do, but I don’t particularly like what it portends. You know, the ‘w’ word that I find hard to deal with.

The funny thing is that, when it comes to fall colors, Western Pennsylvania isn’t a place that people normally think of. But the fact is that it gets pretty beautiful around these parts!

In my last post, I spoke about using Lightroom’s ‘Photo Merge’ in the combined HDR/Panorama mode and noted that it seemed to cause a ‘smear artifact’ (as seen below). I also mentioned that the source of this could be user error or some other unknown problem and that I would be investigating further. And with investigating, I have identified the culprit!

The problem was neither user error nor Lightroom’s HDR/Pano merge capabilities (at least it wasn’t the primary reason). As it turns out, the image resulting from the Lightroom HDR/Pano merge was quite noisy and the artifact I note above was actually generated in Topaz’s Photo AI (the same happened with DeNoise AI as well) during the noise removal process. It hadn’t been immediately apparent to me since I had merged the baseline layer with the noise removal layer. I only noticed the problem after that merge and therefore erroneously concluded that it had come out of Lightroom that way.

Though I was unable to use the image without noise removal (yes, it was that noisy), I was also unable to find any of my noise removal software that could do a better job. Instead, I decided that for the majority of the image I could just use the middle exposures from the HDR/Panorama series and stitch them in Lightroom’s Photo Merge Panorama mode. I could then just mask in the windows from an underexposed image from the HDR series to try to preserve window detail, as that was really the only very bright light source. And this method was successful, as can be seen below.

Here, at a 100% view, is the part of the image that was filled with the ‘smear artifact’ on the prior version. One can see that the artifact is no longer present when the noise removal step is eliminated. The color is slightly different than in the prior version because I reprocessed it from scratch.

Of course, the question remains, why did the Lightroom merge produce such a noisy finished image given the wide exposure range ‘fed’ to it with the HDR series? Of that I am not sure. I will need to do some more experimenting with the HDR/Pano merge to see if this is an ongoing problem in my hands. Hopefully it was a one time event.

Having been quite impressed with the way Lightroom quickly assembled my three image panorama taken with my tilt-shift lens, I decided to give the combined HDR/Panorama mode a try. I used a series of images I had taken at the Cathedral of Learning, with each of the images that make the panorama being taken as an HDR series given the extreme contrast that was present. The panorama consisted of three horizontal images stacked vertically (then cropped for aesthetics), with each horizontal image being composed of a Lightroom assembled five image HDR set.

I initially thought it did a good job, though the result out of Lightroom was fairly noisy. However, the noise was easily taken care of with Topaz DeNoise software.

However, on closer examination I did find some artifacts. For example , this is a 100% view of the upper right corner where the arches come together. You can clearly see that the bricks have areas where the image data is ‘smudged.’

By looking at one of the images from the HDR sequence of that row of the panorama, you can see that, as expected, this smudging wasn’t actually present. The color temperature of the photo is different from the finished image as it has not been individually processed, while the assembled image has been.

I am usually one that doesn’t worry too much about minor imperfections and lets the ‘feel’ of the image carry the day. But in this instance I think the result should be better. I am not sure exactly why the smudging exists, as the camera was on a tripod, eliminating any significant movement between images that might make the merge or HDR assembly difficult. Nonetheless, it still might be operator error in some way and I will need to investigate further. One idea is to assemble each HDR sequence into one image outside of Lightroom and see if the artifact exists using other software and, if not, attempt to merge the finished images into a panorama using Lightroom. This will need some further evaluation!

Lately, I have developed an interest in more fully utilizing the tilt-shift lenses I own, as they enable one to very quickly and easily assemble a small panorama. Theoretically, in order to avoid all parallax errors, the camera should be shifted instead of the lens (and there are, in fact, some tilt-shift lens collars that allow this by mounting the lens, instead of the camera, to the tripod). But this issue really only comes into play when there are objects close to the camera. And, since this is my first foray into panoramas, I wasn’t going to compose that way or worry about it at this point.

My photo friends and I had the opportunity to shoot at the Cathedral of Learning last Sunday and I assembled this panorama, which is made of three overlapping vertical images with the camera in the horizontal position.

Importantly, I see the benefit of this type of panorama as getting the perspective of a longer focal length lens with a wider angle of view than that lens would normally be able to provide. In this particular case, I was able to use my 90mm tilt-shift lens to photograph with a 90mm perspective, and stitching the images together allowed that perspective to exist with a wider angle of view.

I could have fit the entire scene into one frame using a wider angled lens, but then the perspective would have been that of a different focal length. Imagine shooting a large room. You could use a wider and wider focal length lens to get it all in, but then objects further away would look tiny. With a longer focal length lens they would not look as distant and the entire room could be included by stitching multiple images together. For me, the benefit is in increasing the angle of view and not related to getting a larger image in terms of megapixels, as I already have as many as I need! For reference, this image is 7654 x 9355 px in size.

I had never used Lightroom to assemble a panorama before and I have to say I was quite impressed. It rapidly stitched the three images together with seams that were totally invisible no matter how hard I looked! I will be playing around with panoramas a bit more and trying to find out where they are most useful with the type of photography that I enjoy.

On another note, I have typically processed these Cathedral of Learning images in black and white, but, for some reason, this one appealed to me in color. Perhaps that is because of the contrast in color between the stone walls and the wooden bench and stairs, as well as the contrast between the lighting above the bench compared to the light on the back wall.

Several weeks ago, I published a series of posts (Alternative Printing) about some of the photography related things I was experimenting with. I have a few more items to add to the list.

The first is that I have really been taken by the way photographs can be incorporated into encaustic work. I won’t go into it deeply here, except to say that there is a great deal of experimentation and learning to be done. But I think it will be worth it.

The second is that I have had recommended to me some inkjet papers that are fairly expensive, but the person who recommended them said that images printed on them are fantastic. More specifically, he said that the images seem to lie within the paper and not just on top of it. That’s a pretty bold claim, but I had to find out first hand.

The papers are actually hand made in Japan by a company called Awagami. Luckily, I was able to find a sample pack for a reasonable price and ordered it. The price of the papers determine that it won’t be used for ‘everyday’ printing but if it is really excellent perhaps it would be great for those ‘special images’?!

I just received the paper pack and do have to say that the papers (the pack contains a sample of 16 paper types) are visually beautiful.

At this point, I am unsure as to what to test the paper with since there is only one sheet of each. While I would like to see one of my photos printed on them, I don’t think that would really allow me to see all the features of the paper such as it’s contrast, how deep the blacks are, how it holds detail etc. For that reason I am thinking that, as dull as it sounds, the best approach might well be to print a test chart which is made to evaluate how colors and contrast are rendered. The one I use is depicted below.

After I get a chance to make some test prints (icc profiles are available from the manufacturer) I will let you know what I think by posting here. Are they really an improvement over some of the fine art Hahnemuhle papers I have used and loved for some time? We shall see!

There are times when I take a photo and find that I really like it when I’m done with the processing. And the vast majority of times I know why I like it. Perhaps it evokes a certain feeling or makes me remember the time I was out on location making the photograph. Maybe the composition or colors are exceptional. There is usually some aspect of the image that really attracts me to it.

But on occasion, I might like a photo and not really quite understand why. There surely is a reason, but it takes some searching to unpack it. This is one of those photos. I liked it when I processed it a week or so ago, but I couldn’t really say what it was about it that attracted me to it.

In the last week or so, I have been thinking about that. I have come up with two reasons that I enjoy this image. The first is that I like the tonal contrast between the top and the bottom portions of the photo. The second, and more important reason, is the meaning it seems to have (at least to me). The water (this is really a dock with a ladder that I took using both a polarizer and a neutral density filter to obtain a long 6 second exposure in order to smooth out the water) is without detail and looks like a void to me. It could be that there is a 100-foot drop into nothing from the ladder. It could be a step into another dimension. It is a negative space that could be anything and therefore holds a sense of mystery and story. It feels like it represents the uncertainty of life, and that is why I like it.

I think that trying to understand why you like a photo is a worthwhile exercise that can inform your future photography.

Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple really: Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure, or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success.

Thomas J Watson

This Quick Quote is pretty self-explanatory. I am currently trying to learn photo-encaustic techniques and the quote was offered by the teacher of the course. It says all you need to know about learning something new. And it’s obviously quite applicable to the art of photography as well.

During my recent trip to Washington, DC, I simply had to take this photo. Anyone care to take a guess at what it is? Things become confusing when scale is removed from an image. However, if you look carefully, there are clues as to the scale.

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to visit the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and was totally ‘blown away’ by a sculpture I saw there. It was of a woman wearing a veil, but what really drew me in was that the detail away from the veil was sharp and rich, while the detail behind the veil was smoothed over and muted: exactly what someone wearing a veil would look like. But it wasn’t that a veil had been placed over the sculpture, the veil itself was sculpted in stone. This was art that I had to keep looking at in awe and wonderment. For anyone interested in the details, the piece is known both as ‘The Veiled Bust’ and ‘The Veiled Nun’ and it was sculpted in 1863 by Giuseppe Croff.

I was a bit busy this week, but I did have time to convert another one of my Oregon sea stack image into a black and white version. I wrote about the black and white sea stacks in my last post.

In my mind, this image conveys a very different feel than the color version, which I include below. The color version seems to be all about the sunset and the warm colors of the light, while the black and white version puts the focus on the sea stacks themselves and how the light interacts with them depending on how far out they are from the shore.

Over the last several years, I have had the opportunity to photograph many sea stacks along the Oregon Coast. I usually process them in color, as the blue ocean contrasts well with the warm, orange colors of sunset. But recently, I started wondering how these images might look in black and white. It doesn’t always work, but when it does work, it seems to work extremely well.

Success With Art Resin And Encaustic Wax

Finally, I have had some success in my alternative printing journey. Actually, this seems to have morphed into a journey of how to display one’s work outside of the traditional method of matting and framing. In my last alternative printing report (that would be #6, in case you have lost count), I reported excellent results using Art Resin after mounting a print to a cradled artist’s board with painted sides. The only problem was that I didn’t like the appearance of the sides of the board when covered with resin and wanted to find a way to keep them clear of resin in order to have them retain their matte finish. Doing a little research online, I found that plain old painters tape would often let the resin seep beneath it, but there was one report of a seriously sticky tape (Tuck tape) that would prevent that from happening. Not wanting to ruin the painted sides of the piece by pulling off the paint with tape, I devised a way to use painters tape to cover almost all the sides, save for about 1/8 inch. I then used the Tuck tape over the painters tape, extending over that last 1/8 inch (to act as a ‘dam’ to keep the resin out) and got great results. Here is the 14x14 inch piece that has a ‘printed on metal’ look to it.

The white stripe at the top is just a reflection of the fluorescent bulb in my light-box. In my last report the sides of the piece were covered with resin and looked like this (unattractive):

Using my new technique, the sides of the piece looked great:

In short, I am quite pleased with how Art Resin enhances artwork and gives it a unique feel. By not having a piece of physical glass covering the piece, the viewer feels closer to the image. I think for photos that would look good on metal or on a glossy substrate this is really an excellent treatment!

MOVING ON….to wax. Photo encaustic is definitely a more difficult process than using Art Resin, but after a bit of repeat learning and trial and error I have begun to get results I am quite pleased with. In a prior post, I showed how I was getting very cloudy and patchy results:

Now, with a bit of experimentation and research, I am getting a much nicer piece. This is a 12x12 inch photo mounted onto a cradled artist’s panel:

If I hold it up at an angle you can see that there is a really nice texture to the wax as well as a unique appearing translucency:

For images that are on matte paper and/or which incorporate texture, I think this is a really beautiful method of display and requires no further protection other than the wax. The encaustic process can really enhance the appropriate image. By the way, what I am calling wax is actually encaustic medium, which contains beeswax and damar resin, which acts as a hardening agent.

Of course, if you wanted, you could also display both the finished resin and encaustic pieces within floater frames without glass, though this is by no means necessary.

I am very much looking forward to incorporating both of these techniques into my photography. I feel that, though the images themselves should stand alone as artwork, these techniques really help to make the pieces unique (particularly the wax). In addition, these methods of display actually enhance the artwork and allows the display to become integrated into the artwork itself.

I will definitely be showing what I create using these techniques in future posts, but with this post I end this series on alternative printing!

Art Resin

I promised I would return to my photo-encuastic progress, and I will. Just not today. The reason is that I am actually making progress with it and want to have just a bit more time to experiment. I have definitely found some things I was doing wrong and my results are improving. It’s something that definitely takes practice.

But today I would like to tell you about something else I tried that really gave me a beautiful result and that I am excited about. I am talking about Art Resin. Art resin is a perfectly clear, non-toxic, and easy-to-use epoxy resin that can be used to coat artwork. I bought their smallest size along with their accessory kit to give it a try.

I mounted a photo onto a cradled wood panel and painted the sides, as I have done for the encaustic pieces I have previously shown. The cradled panel is then held up off the work surface by four short plastic pieces (from the accessory kit) so that any excess resin runs down the sides and doesn’t end up cementing the piece to the work surface. You then check that the piece you are working on is level (so the resin coating is even) and can put a bit of cardboard under any of the four supports if needed. The epoxy is then mixed, poured over the photo, and spread using a spreader (again, from the accessory kit). Air bubbles are then easily removed using a small torch and the piece is then protected by putting a box over it (so that dust doesn’t find its way onto the surface of the resin before it cures). By the next day, the resin is hard to the touch.

The result was beautiful. The finish was smooth and glossy with no imperfections. It has to be used with the right image, as it does have quite a glossy surface. But glossy doesn’t really fully explain it. If I had to compare it to anything, I would say that it looks like an image printed on metal.

The photo of the finished piece below doesn’t really do it justice because the photo doesn’t transmit that metallic feel. In addition, it doesn’t show that the piece is really a three-dimensional one on a wood panel approximately an inch deep.

One aspect of Art Resin I still need to work on is the sides of the piece. The options for the sides are to use a foam brush or your gloved hand to wipe the liquid resin along the sides to coat them, to tape the sides flush with the top of the panel to try to keep the resin off the sides, or to tape the sides and have the tape extend higher than the edge to build a ‘dam’ to get a thicker resin layer.

I tried coating the sides of the piece with a foam brush because I don’t really want or need a thicker resin layer. As you can see from the photo of the side below, the coating with a foam brush turned out very uneven (which is unlike the front which is wonderfully even and smooth). In addition, I don’t really like the shininess on the wooden sides. So my next attempt is going to be with the sides taped to try to keep the resin off of it. I may also play around with seeing if one could add a matte coating of some sort.

I think this will be quite an easy fix. The ‘hard’ part (the front) really came out beautifully on the first try. I will definitely be ordering some more resin and plan on making more artwork with it. In addition to giving a photo a different look, it also gives it a three-dimensionality by having it mounted on a cradled art board and allows a different way of displaying images besides the traditional (and very expensive) matting and framing.

Photo Encaustic

Thus far, in Reports 1-4, I searched for ways to make my photographs into more unique artwork, and have not come up with anything that has intrigued me enough to want to pursue or learn about in depth. But now I have now started to experiment with photo encaustic. Photo what? What is photo encaustic?

Encaustic art is the use of wax and various pigments to create wax-based paintings. Photo encaustic is combining photography with encaustic art. This can become a very deep and involved field that ultimately combines very advanced encaustic techniques with photography; where the photograph becomes a piece of the encaustic artwork. But like most things, it is best to start with the basics. And so I have started with the most basic combination there is for combining photography and encaustic work.

I suspect the most basic photo encaustic project one can undertake is to mount your photograph to a sturdy support and coat it with wax. To learn how to do this I signed up for an online photo encaustic course and learned how to prepare a three-dimensional raw wood artist’s panel and bond a photo to it. This part turned out to be fairly easy to accomplish. One can buy such panels relatively cheaply. The sides of the panel can be painted, your print is then bonded to the surface of the panel with an archival adhesive, and the edges of the print are then trimmed to the exact size of the panel using a sharp blade. Overall, these preparatory steps are petty straightforward.

Then comes the part that really requires the course and background knowledge, which is working with the wax. It does become somewhat involved, but I can honestly say that, unlike the image transfer process, I did actually enjoy the work. In short, the process involves melting the wax (which is actually a mixture of beeswax and damar resin) at a safe temperature, brushing it onto the mounted photo, and fusing the wax to the photo using a small butane or propane torch (an electric heat gun can also be used). Additional wax layers are then painted on and each layer is again fused.

I was able to successfully do this after watching the course and produced this finished piece:

The cloudiness is related to the fact that wax is not transparent. This adds a texture to the translucent piece and I am told that this is how the finished piece is ‘supposed’ to look. But the problem is that, while I don’t mind a bit of translucency ( as opposed to transparency), I personally find this degree of cloudiness objectionable.

And this will lead to my next experiment (and will be the subject of the next Alternative Printing Report). You see, I spoke with two people about these results, the course teacher and the salesperson at my local art store who, as it tuns out, is an encaustic artist. And they came up with two suggestions to try.

The first is to try Art Resin, which is a hard solid resin that is reportedly transparent, instead of wax. This means that the piece will no longer be encaustic, but it may give me the result I am imagining. It also is an absolute finish, as hard resin does not allow for any of the other artistic effects that can be made using the encaustic process. The second suggestion was to use a wax medium with a much higher damar resin content than the one I was using, as this will tend to produce less cloudiness upon drying. I am hopeful that both these ideas will work, while giving somewhat different and hopefully pleasing results.

I will be reporting back on the outcomes of these experiments.

In my Alternative Printmaking Report #2, I discussed the concept of image transfers. Rather than sounding repetitious, I refer anyone interested back to that post for a brief review. There are many ways to accomplish image transfers, but I thought I would try the InkAid Transferiez method because you can use inkjet prints, while in some transfer techniques you need LaserJet prints. In addition, the Transferiez process seemed fairly straightforward.

The first step was to print the image on the Transferiez sheet, and I showed some photos of that in my prior post. One then paints the receiving substrate with the Transferiez solution until it is well coated, places the printed sheet on top of the coated substrate, and gently pushes out any air bubbles, making sure that there is good contact between the printed sheet and substrate. Approximately three minutes later you carefully peel away the printed sheet and the image (hopefully) remains on the substrate with the ink having dissolved off the printed sheet and now adhering to the wet substrate. The final product is then allowed to dry.

Of course, there is a learning curve and I ran into some trouble. I spoke with the company founder who was truly quite helpful and graciously (to say the least) called me personally after I had emailed him with questions. But despite repeated attempts, I had continued problems.

After some false starts because of uncertainty as to how wet the paper should be (if there isn’t enough coating you can get incomplete transfer), I got the hang of it. Overall, as seen below, at first blush the transfer onto a thick fine art paper appeared to go fairly well.

However, on careful inspection, there were some problems. There seemed to be multiple small areas where the transfer occurred, but either incompletely or with some type of artifact. An example is shown below, where, if you look carefully, you can see multiple ‘glittery’ areas. These areas were not uniformly dispersed and were patchy in nature.

It was almost like certain areas were not adhering properly. I thought of several reasons as to why this might be the case. First, the Canon printers apply a ‘Chroma Optimizer’ to remove bronzing from the print and give all the colors the same sheen. This can be applied automatically as needed during the printing process (applied over areas with less ink, I believe) or over the entire image. However, it can not be turned off in the Canon driver. I do not know if this could possibly affect the image transfer, but I think it is unlikely as the Chroma Optimizer is also pigment ‘ink’. In addition, the shiny areas seemed randomly distributed and not isolated to certain colors or ink densities and there seemed to be no difference between the image transfers when the sheets were printed with the Chroma Optimizer on auto or over the entire image.

Another possibility that seemed more likely was that I was using a textured paper. Perhaps the image wasn’t making contact into all the ‘nooks and crannies’ of the paper texture. I tried a transfer with a somewhat smoother paper as well as onto a smooth piece of wood. Though the situation was significantly improved (see below), it was not totally remedied. In the photo below, the paper seems more textured than the images above, but it was actually less so (though still textured). The smooth wood also had these abnormal areas within the transfer.

In fairness, spraying the paper with a semi-gloss protective finishing varnish after it dried did smooth out the surface finish and, for the most part, hid the ‘glittery’ areas yielding a reasonably good result.

In summary, despite multiple attempts and changing multiple variables using the InkAid Transferiez, I could get a reasonable, but not a really good, image transfer. At least not ‘good’ to the degree I was hoping for. To me, it just doesn’t seem worth the hassle of going through the entire process for the type of results I was getting.

Your experience, of course, may vary from mine and if any readers have had better results I would love to hear any tricks you might have. Please do note that there are many reports (and YouTube videos) of people getting quite good results, but given the quality of my ‘made for inkjet’ papers I am not inclined to experiment further with papers. I may give it a whirl in the future on other substrates.

Next up I will be trying photo encaustics, but it may be several weeks before I can report on that given its complexity. In the interim, I will return to my more usual programming!

InkAid Coatings

In my Alternative Printmaking Report #1, I talked about using InkAid coatings on various papers, but found that once the coating is allowed to dry the paper loses its ‘flatness.’ It becomes wavy, and this resulted in print-head strikes with my Canon printer. This might or might not occur with Epson printers because of differences in how the two printers are engineered ( this is not meant as a negative comment towards Canon printers, as I really far prefer my Canon to my prior Epson, after all, printers are not manufactured with this type of usage in mind). Needless to say, print-head strikes are not at all a good thing for your printer to do.

But I decided not to totally give up, and tried two more things. The first was to take the thick fine art paper I had been using (though not as thick as some of the made for inkjet papers I have successfully used in the printer) and put it under some heavy books for two days to see if it would flatten out. The second was to try coating a thinner paper, specifically some Japanese rice paper that I was able to purchase from my nearby art store (and for good measure after coating put that under books as well).

After emerging from the ‘book press,’ the thick paper looked much flatter, but looking at it from the side you could see there was still a bit of a waviness to it, which I tried to remove by pulling it over the edge of a table. I gave printing a whirl…..but, unfortunately , I still got immediate head strikes. Thick papers were definitely out!

What about the thin, translucent rice paper? Success! The paper went through the printer like a champ. No problem at all. I was able to print on it with very good results (see images below). So it definitely can be done using more lightweight papers, even on a Canon printer. The problem is that I am personally a fan of heavier and textured fine art papers, which is what I actually had in mind when initiating the coating project. I don’t enjoy the thinner lightweight papers as much and so will be abandoning the use of the coating for printing. I will be continuing to use the thicker fine art ‘made for inkjet’ papers from Hahnemuhle and Canson that I had been using (and which I like quite a bit).

But what about the image transfers which I had started to write about in my Alternative Printmaking Report #2? I wanted to first take the time to write this update to the coating saga which I had started talking about in my first alternative printmaking report. Part 2 of Image Transfers will be the subject of my next report!

This called for a brief break from the alternative printing series which will resume. Just last week the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh reopened to the public after being closed for a LONG time to all but University students and staff because of Covid. It’s a place where my friends and I have always enjoyed photographing, and having it reopen felt like a bit of a return to normalcy in these strange times. This shot is from our first trip back to the Cathedral.

Since returning was like a breath of fresh air I thought it as worth a quick break from the printing series.