Sunday, April 01, 2012

Acrylics transfers

I bought a Brother Laser printer today! At €49, I couldn't resist - I was looking for a LaserJet for an art project, so I didn't want to spend too much money. I've been wanting to do a collage with acrylics transfers, but my previous experiments with transfers hadn't been successful. I had ended up with solid acrylic on a mirror and it took me months to scrape it off! So, instead of transferring my photos, I printed them on acid-free paper and tried gluing them to the page with acrylic gel, but it was all too clunky and chunky.

A few Google searches later, I found that the recommendation from most sites is to print with a LaserJet, not an InkJet printer. Something to do with the water content, I think.

There are a few techniques described on the web. One of them is to apply the acrylic gel to your canvas and put the printout face down on it and let it dry, some say for an hour, some say overnight, then rub the paper off with water. Another technique is to keep the printout face up, apply 2 layers of gel, and when that is dry (again, how long that will take, I'm not 100% sure), soak the whole thing in water for 10 minutes and rub the paper off, so you have an acrylic transparency you can apply to your canvas. I'm trying 3 different samples,with different drying times and methods. I'll let you know how I get on.

Here are the 3 sites I found most helpful:

http://www.goldenpaints.com/technicaldata/transimg.php
http://www.instructables.com/id/Image-Transfers-with-Acrylic-Gel-Medium/?ALLSTEPS
http://www.instructables.com/id/Quick-Art-Gel-Medium-Transfer/
PS: Don't forget that your image will be a mirror of the original if you apply the printout face down - very important if you want text to be legible!

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