Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Experimentations in printing

Here are my experimentations in printing over the past week:

In printing, ink is built up, white on the computer is no ink, so the paper shows through, and the ink is built up to black, where the ink is really thick. This is kind of obvious, but is the basic rule for printing on different papers.

Some tips for printing on different paper:
1.If the paper/cardboard is too thick, the printer will not accept it. I had some left-over cardboard back cover of a sketchbook, and it was too thick. But, on the oppisite side, thinner paper will not be able to hold the ink and will crumple or sag. So choose ap paper that is thick, but not too thick.
2.thick paint does not hold ink well(see #1), to ink over it, you need small splotches where you can form the picture around the paint and keep it understandable(see#6), unless you like the shadow of ink.
3.I am also assuming thick layers of color pencil does the same thing, but I need to test it. Thin layers looks cool though(see #4).
4.paper already printed on only works if it is matte, not slick. Slick just makes the ink pool on top.
paper that is already dark doesn't work too well, as ink only adds darkness on top, stick with light to medium shades.
5.Also highly contrasting shade variation in patterns doesn't work too well, unless the pattern is small (see #2). But patterns with similar shades looks cool.
6.Check the color of the hue first, especially if it is gray, it looks kinda weird if you guess that the hue is yellowish, so you make the photo green only do find out the gray is actually a greenish-gray.

Next: printing on homemade paper.
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Also, please do not redistribute pictures, because even though it is illegal as stated on the front page, these pictures are of my friends and even though I like these pictures, I am not sure they will. Also it would be creepy to find your pic on a random website, so don't do it.

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