Okay, so I bought one of those Chartpak blender markers last year when I was attempting transfers. Since it didn’t go so well with the first trial, I gave up on the technique and worked with wintergreen oil. I’m starting a linocut for a book and wanted to shortcut some of the drawing. I’ve done gel medium transfers as well as wintergreen oil and found both to be either finicky or disastrous when it came to the printing. I’ll argue that those failures could have been my own fault, but I decided to give the Chartpak blender another go. It worked pretty well. I used a spoon to help the transfer along, so that might have been the secret all along. The one part that annoyed me however was the marker’s juice was almost depleted by the end of what you see in the photo. I hardly used the maker, maybe three or four times. Kind of wasteful financially in my opinion. Oh, also the marker is very fume-y, even in a spacious room. Gag.

Anyway, I guess I would only recommend this for small projects, sketcbhooks, and stuff like this.

Helpful link: click click

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

I got around to this a day later. I didn’t buy paper in time to print. Whoops.

I printed for most of my afternoon. This is was how I spent all of week 9 on, carving and prepping my print. I made a proof print for my mentor meeting on Saturday.

The ink was all old and gummy, which left odd spots. Seeing it printed out, I also saw that the pinkie needed to be carved out more. It just kind of blends with the sweater and hair. After fixing those on Sat.-Sun. I came in today and printed.

I was quite rusty with printing. My first few prints kept coming up grayish and splotchy. I had to experiment with the printing press’s pressure and the amount of ink applied. I printed more than I would have liked, but I got 2-3 good prints to use. It’s hard to notice with these tiny photos, but all the tiny cuts look amazingly detailed in person.

Another thing I was doing this week was attempting a photo transfer. The school’s artstore was out of the blender markers all last week, so I used some of the print studio’s acetone. It came up with hit-or-miss results. When the blender markers finally came in to the school store, I tested them today and got less pleasing results. Both methods give me headaches, so I’m off to test the wintergreen oil tonight. I don’t know if it’s my impatience, the application methods, or the paper, but it’s just not working out like I would expect. Here’s the best transfer that I drew on top of.

The hand didn’t come up at all and I should have left it, but I tried to fix it with ink. I made it worse and since taking this photo, I haven’t managed to improve it. If I can master the transfer method, I’ll redo this photo because I think it’s got some potential for it.

For week 10 I need to:

*look into new shoes

*play with a puppy

*master this transfer technique

*submit to some art shows

*take photos of people as references for future portraits.

*buy a coat (it snowed yesterday!)

*research research research

-Megan