I wasn’t going to bother with a “how-to” to wintergreen oil transfers but for whatever reason, I keep getting a lot of hits for this topic. I’m not complaining, but I feel bad that fresh visitors end up with not much insight on the technique. What I’ll do is give advice on the subject and redirection to other sites that handle the how-to with better attention than I would bother.
I’ve only done transfers a couple times back in my first semester of school. I enjoy the technique, but I found that I have better means of getting what I want with my art projects. Still, it holds wonderful possibilities and can be done at home. I imagine I might go back to it after I graduate and perfect what I know.
*First things first: solvents are toxic. That includes wintergreen oil. Don’t let the pleasant smell fool you. Use a well ventilated space, gloves, and follow proper guides for handling any solvents and disposal of excess materials (common sense studio practices). Either become well informed through credible websites or have a book that can enlight you. I keep an art & safety handbook around.
*I often dilute my wintergreen oil with rubbing alcohol. Wintergreen oil can be expensive. Rubbing alcohol can help stretch it for what it’s worth. I use a press bed to transfer my work, so I cannot verify if this mixtures will lessen the effectiveness of hand printing. You’ll have to experiment.
*I apply the solvent with a brush on a xerox. I soak the copied image and then apply the paper I want to transfer it to. I run it through the press bed with some newsprint to soak up the excess oil.
*Obviously it can take some experimentation. I did the transfer (with just the figure) and drew vulture bunnies around it. There were parts I like and didn’t like with the add-ons. With some photoshopping, I printed out another image to transfer…
Then I added some red/white inks and washes. Bam! A mixed media project with a transfer technique!
*I have not transferred an image by hand, but for those who lack a press bed (obviously expensive even for table top varieties), a baren or a burnisher is suppose to do the trick. I’d recommend the baren, that tool was made for hand printing woodcut relief prints.
*Some helpful links:
1.) More how-to/tips from RISDpedia.
2.) Drawn! has a nice example of a solvent transfer on moleskine.
3.) Places to possibly find wintergreen oil.
I think that’s comprehensive enough on my side. For the most part, I think what you can do with transfers can be done with a ink/laser printer or other (better) printing techniques. It does have the advantage when you apply it to fabrics. One of the graduates in my program hand printed on a six-eight foot sheet of voile. Also, sometimes the effect of what transfers and doesn’t can prove to have a nice aesthetic. Some of my transfers would have a negative brush strokes where the oil barely touch the xerox and didn’t transfer. It looked rather nice (see first image), but it can be hard to purposely attain that.
-Megan
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