Experimenting with Mediums

Like many people, the use of various art mediums has been a bit of a mystery to me and I have concentrated on using just a few that I am familiar with. Recently I participated in a Fibre Arts Take 2 on line course with Wen Redmond. Wen is a master of mediums using digital ground to create effect from photographs that she then transfers to a range of substrates.

The most common digital grounds for this process is Inkaid and it is not available in New Zealand. The Australian supplier was out of stock so I was left a bit high and dry for a lot of the course. So I decided to go to the nearest art store (an hour away from my home) and investigate possible alternatives. Well i had a ball.

Being able to use (and alter on photoshop) my images taken of grunge and natural landscape was just a bonus. Mokau, the closest beach to us, is on the west coast of the North Island and is pounded by huge seas at certain times of the year. It is prone to coastal erosion and the local council has tried various methods to try and halt the land sliding into the sea. The ragged “fabric and huge boulders are part of tis attempt. The old log is the seas deposit on top. Often when I walk along this part of the coast I take photographs and I have used similar photos in several artworks previously.

Using a foil butter paper as a substrate I have coated the surface with Golden Paper paste medium. It gives a rough texture, not unlike handmade paper. using a carrier a sheet, I then printed the image with my Epson inkjet printer. This is the result.

When the inkaid arrived I tried the clean up, shadow deli paper from a mono print exercise and coated that with Inkaid. Once it had dried I printed that, again on a carrier sheet so that it did not scrunch up in the printer. Here is the result

This is the same photo but the effect is quite different. you can see a piece of the deli paper that was not printed on the right. The subtle colours from the deli paper make this image much “warmer “looking