Blog

PrintDreams handheld camera/printer

I SO much want one of these!  It is “designed by Swedish engineer, Alex Breton, for his company printdreams, the ‘printbrush’ is an 8.8-ounce
handheld colour printer, usable on almost any surface with a simple swipe of the device.”  Any surface, which includes fabric.  Wow … can you imagine the possibilities of this thing??  I’ll add, however, that I’ve no idea what it will sell for — I’ve seen info from $100 up to nearly $400.  I also wonder how many prints you can get out of a cartridge and how much cartridges cost.  But, even so, it’s very cool technology.

Pigmented inkjet ink prints on the left of each set, dye-based on the right.

I continually get emails asking for printer recommendations for use with fabric printing, and I always recommend a printer that uses pigmented ink.  The above illustrates why — pigmented ink is not only water resistant, but it is UV resistant.

Backing up a bit, in 1996 I co-authored The Quilter’s Computer Companion.  In the now out-of-print book, we included a chapter about printing on fabric.  Then there was only dye-based inks available for use in home inkjet printers.  Because I dyed fabric, we were able to figure out a recipe for making dye-based inks water resistant based on chemicals used for setting dyes.  This was before Bubble Jet Set hit the market.  After BJS was available, I used it rather than continue to tweak our recipe, especially with the ever changing printers and ink formulations being introduced.  The problem, however, was that while BJS and pre-treated fabrics helped make dye-based inks water resistant, it didn’t make them UV resistant. I knew pigment inks were water resistant and were far more UV resistant, but when printers affordable for the home user became available, the colors weren’t as vivid as what dye-based inks could give. Thus, the solution was to get the vivid colors from dye-based ink and to use a spray for UV protection.

In 2002, that changed. Epson launched a series of printers using Ultrachrome pigmented ink.  It had a color range nearly as vivid, and it was water resistant and UV resistant.  When I bought the 2200 that uses Ultrachrome, I wasn’t sure if it was a good purchase, and I knew no one using that printer for fabric printing (that has certainly changed over the years).  As a result, I continually experimented to find out what worked for my needs.

About a year ago I came across some of the test prints that I made in 2002 when I was comparing  pigment ink prints on fabric to dye-based ink prints on fabric.  I remember then when I made the prints, both sets looked very good.  I also  remember that the dye-based prints on some pre-treated fabrics looked a bit brighter. However, a year plus ago I came across the prints in one of my fabric bins, and I was stunned at the color shift in the dye-based inks and how much they dulled. Also eye opening was that every print made with pigment-based ink looked as good as it did when I printed them.  There were no color shifts at all.

Pigmented left; dye-based on right.

The same -- pigmented left; dye-based right.

Rather than put a close-up of every set of prints, the bottom line is that the pigmented ink consistently retained its color over time. I do have notes on what fabric is what. ColorPlus (Color Textiles) gave the best result (sadly, however, that fabric is now difficult to obtain).  Printed Treasures was also very good. The fabric that did the worse was treated with BJS; however, that was the original formula and it has since changed.

The good news is that dye-based inks have come a long way, and there are now dye-based inks that are UV resistant (however, most are not water resistant).  Also, Epson is not the only company offering pigmented inks.  All of the new Kodak printers use pigment inks, and they are very economical.  Canon and HP also have printers that use pigment.  When looking at those models, be sure the ink says pigment; otherwise, it’s dye based.

That being said, I continue to use Epson printers.  I still have my 2200 as it is a workhorse.  I’ve been recommending that printer for years, and now recommend any successor to it (such as the 2400 and 2800). I also had a Stylus Pro 7600 that prints 24″ wide, which I sold last year.  My newest addition is a Stylus Pro 7900.  I also have a couple small printers that use Durabrite ink.  Those are everyday printers, and I also use them to print fabric labels.

My recommendations for printers: Anything that uses pigmented ink. 

For a printer that prints 13″ and wider, my preference is Epson, one that uses any of the Ultrachrome ink sets.  (Again, there are Canon and HP models that use pigmented ink, so you are not tied to Epson.)

For 8.5″ wide, for Epson, look for a printer that uses Durabrite ink. Note that any printer using that ink is going to create a print exactly the same as another printer using Durabrite.  The difference in price is because of a faster speed or other features, such the ability to scan.  Thus, if on a budget, look for anything on sale.  Again, Canon and HP also make models that use pigmented ink.  Also check out Kodak’s new printers.  They get a very good rating, and their cartridges are larger making them more economical.

My recommendations for pretreated fabrics for use with pigmented ink:
FabriSign by Jacquard, which you can get directly from Jacquard (tell Sandy I sent you) or Dharma Trading.  (Note that ProCoat is formulated for dye-based inks.) FabriSign was revamped a couple years ago, and it is far better than it was prior. I’ve been using it exclusively for anything over 8.5″ wide an am very pleased with its quality.

The other fabric I recommend is anything in the  EQ Printables line.  It is excellent with both pigmented and dye-based inks.  I’m very happy that it is now being offered in 8.5″wide x 120″ rolls.

Since pigmented inks are water-resistant by their nature, some are surprised that I use a pretreated fabric.  I do so because I often find that, depending on the image, I can get a sharper, often more vivid print.  My theory is that the coating may help to prevent the ink droplets to spread a tad less which results in a sharper image. However, experimentation is always key.  You may find that you can get exactly the print you desire without using pretreated fabric.

For printing on other mediums such as Lutradur or thin metals, I recommend inkAID.  The white matte is washable on fabric, although it does stiffen the fabric.  The clear is great on thin metals and on various weights Lutradur and Evalon.

In the future I’ll be sharing more information about printing on fabric, including some of my favorite print settings to use.

For the journal above, I’ve inkjet printed directly onto some of the watercolor papers that I dyed.  You’ll notice the same print has a different look depending on the color paper under it.

None of the paper were pretreated with anything.  I also added painted and distressed thin poly spun (Lutrador)  to some of the signatures in the journal.  And, I made a single signature journal using watercolor paper as the cover and thinner dyed paper for the interior.  That one is now in my handbag for taking notes (although it won’t replace my regular notebook, at least not yet).

I’m eventually going to make another with a butterfly theme, maybe going larger.  We’ll see!

DIGITAL ALCHEMY: Printmaking techniques for fine art, photography, and mixed media, by Bonny Pierce Lhotka

Bonny Lhotka is one of the authors of Digital Art Studio, which is a book that I recommend on a regular basis.  The moment I learned Bonny was working on a new book, I was on a list to buy it.  It arrived, and it didn’t disappoint.  In short, I love this book.  Besides it containing beautiful photography of stunning digital artwork, it is loaded with information on a variety of inkjet printing transfer and direct printing methods.  I particularly enjoyed her approach to using carrier sheets.  Her suggestion to use a sheet of foam core board behind the printer as a support is brilliant!  A small thing that makes a big difference.

The book is divided into four sections: The basics; alchohol gel and supersauce transfers; direct printing; and finishing up and looking ahead.  Transfers and direct printing explain several approaches using various substrates such as plastic, metal, paper, and fabric.  Gelatin transfers include white marble fresco transfers, gelatin to metal, tile, and plastic sheet.  Direct printing includes printing onto metal, metal leaf, and custom substrates.  There are various galleries of work. The final section has a chapter on postcoats and finishing and another on new technology and the future of imaging.

Besides the excellent step-by-step photos, there is a 60 minutes DVD with additional instruction.  While I am certainly not going use every method described in this book (I do have my favorites), I am in awe of the information covered. It’s a beautiful merger of technology and art  The only thing better would be working at her side.  The next time I get an email asking for an inkjet printing book recommendation, unless you are a complete beginner (as this may overwhelm a beginner looking for something basic), this is it!

Digital Alchemy
Pages: 320
New Riders, Part of the Voices That Matter series.

I knew my new printer would be arriving any day, so I expected a call from the freight company to confirm I’d be here to sign for the delivery. I didn’t expect, however, her to ask me whether I had a loading dock. Uh oh.  After I told her it was going to my home, I learned I’d need to pay an addition fee for a drop lift and an additional fee to bring it in. But, once here, it didn’t fit through my front door.  It instead went into the garage (I’m still working out that second fee).  It’s not that the printer is huge, it prints the same width as my 7600, but it’s well packed and its physical size is some 13 inches wider.

Next up was Rich dealing with the directions.

The side of the box  had a large”Open here” sticker.

Peeling back the label revealed a cut out in the cardboard designed to pull open.

Inside was a ziplock bag with the users manual and media book filled with printed samples of Epson’s range of papers.

The box on top is the stand, which needs some assembly.  And Rich is pondering how he will get into the house.

And there it is!  Wow, I cannot believe I got this thing.  The manual suggests two people, but recommends four, to move the printer.  Rich, however, saw the stand had wheels on it.  Those wheels made his day.  “Piece of cake,” he says.  We’ll see!

And speaking of the manual …

it came in a leather book! And on the page showing a line drawing of four people carrying the printer, I’m adding a line drawing under it showing one person with a long pony tail moving it.

This is the box of “starter” inks — 11 of them – including vivid magenta and light magenta, orange, green; light, light-light, and black, yellow, light cyan and cyan; plus a matte black. Whew!  They are 110 ml, which is the same size used in the 7600 (the size of an 8-track tape – for those of you who remember them).  However,  there are three different sizes cartridge available for this machine.  150 ml, 350 ml, and, the holy crap size, 700 ml. This printer uses Epson’s newest generation of  Ultrachrome pigmented inks called HDR, or high definition. The printer and new ink has been getting incredible reviews.  Even so, I find myself second-guessing if I really need this printer (buyer’s guilt?).

Here’s my old 7600.  It’s going to a talented artist who I am sure is going to use it as a tool to further her fantastic artwork.  Once she gets the printer, the new one takes it place here.  Then I start it up and hope for the best.

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.

The Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s chief scientific research agency.

The Image Gallery is provided as a complimentary source of high quality digital photographs available from the Agricultural Research Service Information Staff. The site offer images with web images at three resolutions and high resolution for print images.

The National Park Services Digital Image Archives site provides links to public domain digital images of a variety of sites, including national parks, monuments, historic sites, and so on. All images posted on this site are free, and may be used without a copyright release (however, photo credit should go to the National Park Service). Most of the images can be downloaded in various formats and resolutions, including print resolution. The maximum image size will print at 10.24 x 6.827 at 300 dpi. Keep in mind that a lower print resolution, such as 150 dpi, can often work better than a higher one when printing on fabric.

There are over 600,000 images in The New York Public Library Digital Gallery! The Gallery helps to fulfill the “traditional goal” of The Library “to select, collect, preserve and make accessible the accumulated wisdom of the world, without distinction as to income, religion, nationality, or other human condition.” The Gallery offers “digital images of drawings, illuminated manuscripts, maps, photographs, posters, prints, rare illustrated books, and more.

While the site explains that images an be freely downloaded for personal, research, and study purposes only, their User’s Guide includes detailed information on their terms for commercial use. In part: “As the physical rights holder of this material, most of which is in the public domain for copyright purposes, the Library charges a usage fee to license an image for commercial use.”

The collection include images relating to applied sciences, fine and decorative arts, history, performing arts, and social sciences and include drawings, illuminated manuscripts, maps, photographs, posters, prints, rare illustrated books, and so on.