Working with Nature

Last year I started playing with Corel Painter 12.  My painting skills in reality lean toward creating backgrounds for my journal pages and underpainting for my digital prints.  All abstract, so I find this whole digital painting idea really challenging.

 Jeremy Sutton has a wonderful website along with books and dvd's about the subject-Paint Box TV.  He is truly amazing and while I am still fumbling along learning from him I am enjoying the process.  Hopefully I will get comfortable with Painter and get enough time to master some of my own ideas.

Digital Prints on Recycled Printers Plates

Printing on recycled printers plates is easy with a bit of prep.  There are 2 printed plates depicted here.  The prints created with Corel Painter 12 include one painted abstract and one pattern taken from another painted abstract background.  The brushes from Corel are amazing and I have also been working with some of Jeremy Suttons custom brushes I downloaded from Paintbox TV.  His brushes are wonderful to work with.  I know Photoshop has brushes, but seriously, Corel has the brush category in a class of it's own.  

To prepare the printers plates it took a little bit of work on the original surface of the plate.  These plates were coated with turquoise and while it is possible to print them unless you use a white matte pre coat from inkAID, your print will reflect lots of the turquoise color or be a bit dark.  I used a paint peeler type of chemical to rub out most of the turq color and ended up with a somewhat creamy surface.  Actually a nice color to print on.  The pre coat I used was inkAID clear matte.  I sanded the surface and cleaned it with Citrasolv before using the pre coat.  Once the print was dry, MSA varnish from Golden was used on top of the surfaces to protect the print.  

Full plate, pattern from painted print

Detail of pattern

Full print, you can see the edges of the plate on this and the first picture

Detail