New Activity-New Sites

You can tell I haven't posted here for awhile.  Do you want to catch up with me?  Then here are several ways to do that.  Visit my new and active sites. You can click on the site titles to find my new places:

Digital Alternative Surfaces

Digital Alternative Studio

Digital Alternative Journaling

Join me for lots of interesting information!!

Digital Alternative Surfaces with Paper

Working with paper and paper elements you can create a thin textural substrate to enhance your digital print.  I have included some closeups here from the samples for a workshop just published on KathyAnne Art -"Constructing Simple Surfaces for Digital Printing."

Sometimes it's the simple ideas that can get some amazing looks from your digital prints.  Two of the ideas in this workshop include using cut up maps and regular old tissue paper.  Map details are not in the pictures here.

The great thing about adding these elements to paper is that you can get a textural look from the paper where the map print is seen along with some surface texture by printing your digital image on this alternative surface.  With tissue paper you can do all sorts of little crinkles in the tissue and still have the paper go through a regular pass through printer.  The combinations of elements to define texture are of course unlimited. Experimenting with this amazingly fun!

The digital alternative surfaces pictured here have a spontaneous wrinkled surface.  The details in the first 4 are from a sheet of soft paper that is wrinkled and then printed.  It makes a luscious surface seen in person with a matte soft surface that invokes the texture of the image and the paper.  The second set of more colorful prints substrate is a base of smooth thin kozo paper covered with tissue for the texture.

Crochet with Digital Prints

Crocheting elements for this piece is a challenging journey.  My thoughts have been running around thinking of other configurations to use with the finished crochet, but the last few days have been spent enlarging the crochet surface on all sides.  You can see the back, front and detail of the piece so far.  

As the crochet evolves, pieces of digital prints on recycled dictionary paper are strung on the cotton in various colors.  Slow going, but the textures are amazing and as I work different words and pictures come up in the random selections of pages and words that were over printed.  I get to see all sorts of phrases and words that combine with the prints that will never be found again.  Yesterday I took one of the squares out of the mix for my journal.  Underneath the printing was a picture of several anthurium flowers. I still have one of those plants from my last trip to Hawaii.  There are tons of word treasures in the prints.

My current plan is to crochet this out with all 100+ sheets of torn paper and then complete another layer of texture to strengthen the piece to hang.  This is really digital alternative surfaces in a interesting textural composition.

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

Recycling Papers with Digital Prints Update

My plans with the digital prints from my last post are in constant rethinking.  Not really sure where this is going, but it seems I want to construct it into a forest book from my new series.  I have been cutting pieces of hardware cloth to construct and try shapes.  The process continues and everyday I think I am getting closer to where I want to be with this. Still up in the air.......