Image Transfers in the Spring

I got to choose the project for this week - and it was to transfer an image using any technique and in the theme of Spring.

I was out in my yard last weekend when everything finally burst into bloom. I took some photos of the lavender, so I used this photo as the base for the project. Here is the photo in my computer, in Lightroom. I love this program to store and manipulate images, though I didn't do much to this photo other than crop it and put a border around it.

I used the Print module in Lightroom to print out two 5x7 copies of the image on transparency film, printed onto the emulsion side.

Here's one of the images, with a piece of the print paper (Rives BFK) underneath it.

Since I had two identical copies of the image, I used a brush loaded with Purell hand sanitizer to mess with the background of blue sky on one of them. The other, I left alone.

 

Transferring the image to the print paper is super easy. Start by putting a thinnish film of Purell on the paper where you want the image to go. Enough to be wet, but not so much as to be sloppy, unless that is the look you are going for.

Another tip: use a brayer that is clean, but not that you care about because the hand sanitizer might affect the rubber. I was going to use my new printmaking brayers but then thought better of it.

Put the transparency down onto the paper, emulsion side down,and run the brayer over the top of it to help work the image off the transparency and onto the paper.

I always lift the edge carefully to make sure the image is separating from the film. If it is not, you can rub firmly with your fingertips, or lift up the plastic and add more Purell underneath.

Here are the results. The top is the one where I messed up the background a bit. The bottom one is the clean transfer.

You can see that even the "clean" one has a bit of a messed up feel to it, because the image never fully transfers over.

Jacked up background before transferring image.

Image transferred without any manipulation.