Alternative Printmaking Report #1

In my last post, I mentioned some techniques I was considering undertaking that are related to alternative printing methods. After writing that list, I decided that I wanted to specifically explore three different avenues:

• Printing on fine art papers (and possibly fabrics) using InkAid coatings

• Image transfers onto various media

• Photo Encaustics

I thought some people might be interested in updates, particularly if they were considering doing such work themselves. This is the first of those updates.

The first thing I wanted to try was printing on fine art papers that were not meant for inkjet printers. There are a lot of very luxurious types of art papers available, and living right near an Artists and Craftsmen store (it’s a great place to browse), I have easy access to seeing and feeling (paper is a tactile experience as well as a visual one) many of these papers. I bought one that I found particularly nice to try out (an Arches warm-toned molded cover paper).

But I ran into BIG trouble, enough that I have abandoned the idea of using this technique with my current printer. Whatever paper you choose needs to be coated with an ink-receptive coating. When you coat a porous surface like paper, the coating is absorbed, and as it dries the paper curls. That is well recognized on the InkAid site and they mention that you can flatten the paper considerably by putting a weight on it or pulling it over a tabletop edge to get out the curl. And the truth is that the tabletop method works pretty well at flattening the paper. But it isn’t perfect. And that’s the rub.

Epson printers (at least the large format ones that I am familiar with) feed paper from the back straight down and the sheet is then curled under the platen and held flat by the platen and suction before it gets to the printhead. I might be wrong about that since it has been some time since I had my Epson 7600 and 7900’s. But I have a wide format Canon printer now, and that printer does things differently.

Canon wide format printers load from the front, with the paper being parallel to the printhead. The paper is then drawn into the printer and held flat by suction. A portion of the printhead that is not squirting ink runs back and forth over a portion of the paper that is not yet held down by the platen or with suction because it has not yet reached the platen. Because the paper is not nearly perfectly flat, even after straightening, the printhead hits the paper that is feeding, wreaks havoc, and stops while spitting out an error message. Severe head strikes are not something you want to see your printed doing, and it did so with all three paper samples and coatings that I used, despite setting the platen gap to the widest setting (which makes sense because I believe the strikes were occurring proximal to the platen).

The long and the short of it is that I won’t be trying this any further with papers, though I might try printing on fabric (which I am guessing won’t curl and that could be taped onto a carrier sheet so that it is flat). But for right now I am giving up on this method,

So what’s next in line? I am going to be trying image transfers using a different InkAid product. In image transfer, work is printed in a more or less standard fashion and the substrate the image is to be ultimately transferred to (one can try lots of entering substrates….wood, paper, metal, canvas, tile, etc) is coated with a material that absorbs or transfers the ink from the print to the new substrate (for a broader view see The Mixed Media Photography Book’ by Nitsa Malik). The InkAid product utilizes prints that are made on a clear sheet that has a special coating on it. This sheet is flat and comes directly from the manufacturer pre-coated so I won’t have the head strike issue. I am assuming that the printer will ‘see’ the clear sheet but that remains to be seen in my next adventure in alternative print making!

ADDENDA: I spoke with the company and I may have a solution, so there just may be a follow up post to this!

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