Precoats for Inkjet Printing
I have been enjoying inkjet printing on fabric since the early 1990s. Since that time, new products have emerged offering artists an extended range of inkjet printing options. Last year I had the pleasure of taking an extended workshop with Mary Taylor in her Marshfield, Mass studio called “Mixed Media Digital Printmaking.” I was the only person in the group who was primarily interested in textile art, although I am very interested in inkjet (and other printing) on various media. Others in the class included photographers and artists using other media such as oils and acrylics. The differences in backgrounds and approaches made the experience very enjoyable.We worked with an Epson 7800 printer, which was perfect for me, and a variety of inkAID precoats.
If you’re not familar with inkAID, it is a liquid used to precoat a variety of surfaces making them receptive to inkjet ink. The precoats work with just about any surface that you an get into your printer, including plastic and aluminum.
We used a variety of precoats to do things such as printing on handmade papers, making custom substrates, transferring images to fresco, printing on black paper and aluminum, creating and printing a “skin,” and more.
Mary works with Dorothy Simpson Krause, an author of the acclaimed book Digital Art Studio
and she was extremely gracious and sharing. If you don’t have Digital Art Studio, I highly recommend it. It has a good deal of the information in it that was covered in the class and more.
The big question for textile artists, and one taken right from inkAID’s website, is:
Q. Can inkAID be used to precoat fabric for printing?
A. inkAID can be used to precoat fabric for use in collage, banners or stretched art. inkAID White-Matte is a very water resistant coating and can be machine washed. For best results use pigment ink for these applications. The clear inkAID pre-coats cannot be used on fabric that will be washed.
More answers to inkAID-related questions are here, and you can find a lot of information about the various inkAID at their site:
Here are a few of the items that I printed in the workshop.
This is an image I took in Wales that is printed on a “skin” — a surface made of several layers of acrylic medium and InkAID that are to a plastic, printed on, and then peeled away from the plastic. The skin can then be placed onto a variety of surfaces. One woman used it to cover a shoe, and it looked great.
Here is the image, with half of it under a mirror. Mary had some images that she printed on skins and applied to a mirror. The effect is very attractive.
This is a photo collage printed onto a fabric. I show it here with some fabrics that may coordinate into a small wallhanging. I haven’t done a thing with it since.
I photographed this butterfly and printed it onto a substrate made from molding paste added to a Lutrador (a spun poly) base. The molding paste was sculpted into different mounds. After the molding paste dried, I painted on a couple coatings of InkAID.
When creating such a substrate, it’s important to confirm that it will fit through the printer. Mary has a nifty gadget to help assist in this regard. It’s called a “slot ruler,” and is easily made with two pieces of square aluminum tubing. What you do is place some pennies between the two piece and duct tape the edges together, removing the pennies after the edges are taped. The Epson printer accepts media up to 1.5mm which apparently is the thickness of a penny. After a substrate was made, we checked it in this device. If it fit through, then we knew it could be printed on. If it didn’t fit through, then we sanded the substrate down and tried again.
This close-up hopefully shows off the dimension of the molding paste.
This is a “fresco” that was applied to a piece of wood. After it dried, we took images that were printed on a transparency and transferred them onto the surface.
This angle shows the wood and thickness of the surface.
If this is something you’d like to try, Mary graciously shares her compete instructions for making a fresco, including suppliers, here. She recommends purchasing gelatin from Gelatin Innovations, a commercial gelatin supply company. The prices are far less than buying boxes at the grocery store.
Mary also teaches gelatin monprints and offers her recipe and instructions. She She also includes directions for making a monoprint acordian book that appeared on That’s Clever! – Episode HCLVR-161
In addition to InkAID precoats,Golden recently announced its collection of digital precoats that seem very much up the same alley as the inkAID precoats. I received in the mail the set of three which I’ll be experimenting with.
Here is the info on Golden’s digital grounds, and you’ll see they are almost identical.
Golden describes their products as, “GOLDEN Digital Grounds are ink-receptive coatings intended for use with ink-jet printers. They allow the artist to coat and subsequently print over a large variety of substrates including paper, canvas, metal and acrylic paints, using ordinary computer printers and inks.”
Golden offers a FREE newsletter called “Just Paint.”
You can sign up for a paper newsletter or notification of a color PDF. The PDFs of past issues, along with an article listing that appears in each issue is also available on the site.
April 17th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Hi Gloria
Thanks for sharing this information. I have been using the Inkaid matte finish in just my normal Epson printer- so creating A4 images- the result are terrific- the colour beautiful. I have also sewn the Inkaid printed photos- by hand and whilst reasonabley stable it does occasionally create small flakes- still the prints come out so well that it’s worth it!
April 17th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
When you put it on your fabric, do you put it on straight or dilute it? For the work I did, it was not diluted. But I wonder if on fabric it can be somewhat diluted.
April 17th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Wow! Thanks for sharing this, Gloria! I can’t wait to try some of the techniques you discussed and am looking forward to getting some of the Inkaid and seeing what I can do with it. I also look forward to hearing what Dijanne says about using it straight or diluted.
April 18th, 2008 at 10:21 am
My pleasure! I’m hoping Dijanne lets us know, too! Let me know how you make out.
June 30th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Gloria, You continually amaze me. When I first saw a photo of you I thought, how serious is this beautiful model? Well since then I’ve found out you are very serious. Because you are so beautiful I think it must set some people back. Please excuse my stupid judgement on your looks. I only tell you that because the same has happen to me, yet in a different manner. NOT on my beauty. LOL. Your work is GORGEOUS! Thank you for sharing so much. Also, I wish you success in your orphan works legislation. I have added that link to my blog AND people have actually clicked on it. You are a gift! Thank you, ann
July 1st, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Oh Ann, thank you. But did someone pay you for those kind words? Oh wait, that must have been me slipping you the $20s.
February 15th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Gloria, this is a fantastic round up of information…and you are right, the skin over the mirror is really wonderful…it looks living, somehow.
Would you mind if I linked to this post on my own blog?
~~Allie
February 15th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
That’s fine! :)
August 23rd, 2009 at 9:31 am
Gloria,
Thanks for all this valuable info. I came across your site while doing research on inkjet printing on fabrc. I am interested in inkjet printing on fabric to be used for wearables. I am still confused if I should be using the dye based inks or the pigmented inks. I recently bought a used Epson 9600 for this purpose. What is your recommendation?
Thanks,
Cher
August 24th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Cher – a used 9600. Nice! My choice is pigments. IF you go pigments, I’d suggest you use a pretreated silk. I find the best is from Colortextiles; however, it is sometimes difficult to get depending on what they have in stock. ColorPlusFabrics is the same company. Also, Lori from that company can give you good help on how to use that printer with fabric, and the ColorPlusFabrics site has profiles that you can download that are made for the 9600 (any Ultrachrome model). Good luck! Oh, for ink, atlex.com has the best prices.
January 12th, 2010 at 9:07 am
I am afeaid to apply epoxy floor coatings the smell can be toxic. Does it stay for a long perod at home?
January 14th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
I’ve not tried it. The teacher seems okay with it, though.
May 18th, 2010 at 5:08 pm
Thanks so much for the tip on atlex.com, I was paying a much higher price for ink for my EPSON 2400.
February 4th, 2011 at 5:19 pm
Gloria,
Congratulations on your wonderful work and thank you so much for sharing. I am sending all my friends to visit the site. One question I have is how you made such a beautiful, smooth, skin to print on. I tried making a skin using Golden Soft Gel gloss,carefully spreading it on a sheet of plastic with an old credit card and got tons of tiny bubbles. The skin was clear and fairly even but the bubbles were a problem. Could you share your work flow on creating skins along with materials you used?
Thanks so much.
Jackson
August 14th, 2011 at 12:14 pm
Hi Gloria:
OKAY, I need to buy your book. Although I find your writings to be very helpful. Thank you.
I have two epson printers and wonder about the pigment inks. What happens if I use the ‘over the counter” inks from Staples? If I use inkaid or Golden Digital ground, is there a difference?