29/05/2009

Creative Photography - Transfers

If I give you all my secrets about inkjet (image) transfers I shall have to kill you so be warned!

The process of transferring an inkjet image or any similar image, photocopy, magazine picture etc using an acrylic medium has been around for a long time. If you Google any combination of those words you will find loads of stuff. I have listed a few of the links I found useful and or interesting.

I have used inkjet prints both dye and pigmented inks. After much experimentation I settled on a digital inkjet paper sold by Granthams, Blackpool. It is ColourLink Matt Inkjet Paper, single sided 100g (UPDATE - this paper is no longer available from this source, try Jessops Matt 100g). You can use almost any paper to start with. As for the transfer medium, I started off using PVA glue, BQ own brand is cheap. It works well but can be unpredictable. You can try anything which contains acrylic polymers, emulsion paint, acrylic primer/undercoat, gesso, acrylic astists paint etc. I ended up using the Rolls Royce of acrylic ploymers "Goldens Regular Gel (Matte)". It is worth a visit to Goldens website thay have lots of info about acrylic transfer.

You can see some of my transfer artwork on alistairparkerart.com go to Gallery and choose "mixed media"

Here are a few links:-

http://nonphotography.com/blog/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/forgottenpittsburgh/1414931085/
http://www.squidoo.com/inkjetimagetransfer
http://www.art-e-zine.co.uk/imagepaper.html