Shoshiplatypus

Emulsion

Watching Robyn McClendon the other day, she produced some absolutely scrumptious “old wall” prints on her gel press, using matte acrylic or chalk paints. She brayered this paint onto the plate and then spritzed it with dye ink which immediately reacted and started beading up and pulling away from the paint. She brayered it lightly and immediately placed the paper over it and pulled a print. The result looked like an ancient stucco wall that was peeling off. Robyn is famous for her “old walls” and I have to agree with her – I adore them myself, and often photograph them when out and about. Around here we have a lot of ancient stone and brick walls which are beautiful, and perhaps the old painted and stuccoed walls are less common.

I haven’t got any matte acrylics or chalk paints, and wondered if emulsion paint would do. I have several small pots of emulsion that I bought several years ago when I was painting a series of Ikea mirror frames. I painted the emulsion over some crackle glaze to very good effect.

I searched online for some considerable time before I found anything about emulsion on the gel plate. One person said she had had success with this so I decided to give it a try. Before I did so, I looked up what emulsion paint was made of, and it appears that the pigment is combind with a polymer, usually acrylic, and suspended in water as an emulsion. I thought that if it was acrylic-based, it should perform much as normal acrylic paint would do.

The result was not a success. The paint shrank away from the plate and tended to bead up. I spritzed it with some dye ink and brayered it again, and placed on the paper. After pressing it well, it was quite difficult to remove from the plate, and some of the surface of the paper tore away around the edges and had to be peeled off afterwards. The ink did not give that wonderful streaked and broken effect. The result is usable, but not the effect I was looking for. Perhaps the paint was just too wet.

As you can see, it buckled the paper quite a bit, too.

I added some more and tried again.

The result was slightly better, but I wasn’t happy with how the paint reacted with the plate and made it so difficult to pull the paper away. The one on the right is the print I pulled, having added some unbleached titanium. Several pulls after this were also affected, with the paint tending to shrink away from the plate, but eventually it settled down.

The surface is certainly dead matte and the effect isn’t too bad. However, this experiment with emulsion paint was not a success and I shan’t be doing it again. I think I shall invest in a small collection of pastel shades in a chalky paint, maybe some of the PaperArtsy Fresco paints. They certainly have a wide range of colours.

Sink mats

I wasn’t going to experiment with my new sink mats until the final Arteza iridescent paint arrived – due this Wednesday, but after playing around with the emulsion, and having the gel plate out and everything to hand, I thought I’d forge ahead and give them a try.

These were the first ones. I brayered on some burnt umber acrylic paint and laid the mat on top, and then the paper, in most cases tissue and this is easier to press into the holes in the mat. The one at top left was the print from the mat at top right in the following photo.

The one on the right was taken from the mat at the bottom of the above photo. I felt that both these prints were less than satisfactory, but I did quite like the first one after a while. The bottom photos were the ghost prints – again, not great. They were improved by overprinting with another colour – Golden titan green pale on the left, and unbleached titanium on the right.

The next photo shows the print-offs from the paint on the mats, onto three different papers. The one at top left is the lattice mat, with burnt umber, printed off onto one of the flimsy sheets used to separate the acetate sheets in the box. This came out really well. The one at top right is unbleached titanium printed off onto packaging paper, and the one at the bottom is the print-off, again in burnt umber, of the mat shown at top right in the montage photo. This was printed onto tissue paper. All of these were OK, although I did manage to poke a hole through the tissue paper with my finger.

A couple more prints with paint brayered onto the plate and a plain print pulled, to clean the plate. The tissue paper one tore when I pulled it. The other one is on printer paper. They both have a combination of Golden titan green pale and the new Arteza iridescent Playful Pink. This gave both sheets a lovely subtle sheen which the photo hasn’t really picked up.

Returning to the sink mats, here are some ghost prints, pulled with unbleached titanium and burnt umber. The two on the left are from that same plastic mat with the raised circle pattern, and the one on the right was the rubbery lattice mat. This has come out very well.

Regarding the plastic mat, I had a feeling I would have problems with the little projections on the underside. They definitely prevented me from getting any decent prints, so I decided to remove them.

First of all I cut the mat down to size. At the top of the next photo you can see a flat portion with no holes – this is half the label which was unfortunately slap bang in the middle of the mat. I cut the mat in half so that this piece would be at the edge, and this has made the piece of mat slightly narrower than A4 but this doesn’t matter too much.

I used a small pair of snips to remove the projections. This proved to be quite difficult. Plastic is peculiar stuff to work with. I couldn’t get a clean “snip” but had to use a combination of grasping and twisting, pulling and stretching and eventually snipping. You can see the bits beside the mat. Some came away pretty flush but some were not so good, and any remaining projection was a lot harder to get hold of once most of it was gone. I smoothed them all off with a nail file. You can still feel a bit of a projection with some of them but I think this will just add texture to any prints.

I have yet to experiment with it now I’ve modified it. The pattern on the top side is obviously more interesting but it is very three dimensional. This mat may be the least satisfactory in use.

Here’s a close-up of the work in progress, removing the projections.

Not an easy job, but I was able to complete it in an evening, while watching TV. My fingers ended up pretty sore!