A Little Printing

In anticipation of doing lots more linocutting and stamping, I used some of my Christams money to buy more paint - lots of paint. Hope springs eternal, and I reasoned that I'd be more apt to do this if I had a paint that did not feel precious to me (like the Versatex fabric paint already in my collection) in quantities that said "Go hog wild!" You may remember how unhappy I was with the Speedball Fabric Block Printing Ink I purchased for my on-line class (very smelly oil-based ink that stayed tacky for months). So I did a little research and narrowed it down to three choices, eventually settling on Speedball screen printing ink for fabric based on information in a helpful comparison chart on the Dharma Trading Company site, and cost. I used it to test my freshly carved sunburst stamp on paper and am very pleased, both with the ink and the stamp. The stamp has since been cleaned up to remove some of the background noise.

Then I moved on to a different printing project that's been on my mind since before Christmas. You may recognize these two designs from the 9 block sampler from the lino class. I separated the individual designs as I didn't see me using the sampler, and I thought these two might compliment the autumn trees photo I printed on fabric. Overall a little darker than I think I want, but I particularly like the top one. I'll either try again with a different color of paint or perhaps I can brighten these up by adding to them, building up some texture. Regardless, I am very happy with the way the paint went on and didn't change the hand of the fabric (nor is it tacky).

So that's all the printing I wanted to do, but you know me - I just can't bear to wash paint down the drain. I looked at the various "paint rags" and test prints I had hanging in the bathroom and didn't see the point of rolling black over them, even if it were faint. Ah - what about putting something under one of them and brayering over the top. I remembered a set of texture plates I'd bought, meant for use with Paint Stixs. They work great with this paint and the foam brayer. Not sure I'm improving the underlying fabric though!

Not to worry - this is experimenting, nay, exploring. I had more paint to expend and more textures to choose from and decided to roll over the faint print I'd made of the 9 block sampler. Not very imaginative, but it told me what I needed to know - this is a good technique.