Starting out before christmas and new years I was in a rush to make an XL size roll of transfer film in order to utilize the  print lab at my alma matter.  After hours of sanding and coating a big-ol roll of  acetate I arrived at Rowan’s print lab and received a crash course in printing on the Epson 9800 including the multiple head cleaning cycles.  Much thanks to Mike Benson for being so helpful. Unfortunately in the process of sanding the acetate warped and some areas didn’t stay flat.  Sadly the print heads scraped the surface a few times and my prints were totally useless.  The good news that came out of this is that Mike Suggested i do a few prints on a transparency film they had in the print lab.  After some examination i realized that it was the ideal substrate for my process.  Later I found a 44″ by 100′ roll on ebay and clicked the buy now option.

In the mean time I busied myself with holidays, visiting, and moving out of my temporary studio.  I’m now back in the basement at my parents house where I spent so much time as a kid painting the walls with Dinosaurs and playing G.I. Joe. Getting the studio together took some work, there was a lot to throw away and more to rearrange. After finishing those important steps I busied myself gessoing and sanding my panels and preparing some paper for  transfers.  Once the Roll of film arrived I started cutting down 13″ by 44″ sections in order to run them through my printer which has been operating fantastically for the last few days!

Three days ago I attempted Gel Medium transfer to one of my large panels, unfortunately I was unable to get a smooth enough coating on the panel to make the transfer turn out satisfactorily. A quick scrub and wash later I was re-gessoing the pannel to prep it for another try. Yesterday I retried with an acrylic medium x gelatin transfer process that worked out swimmingly!

I’ll be going back to Rowan later this week to get some more large prints and with any luck i’ll have the majority of my work completed for the show!

lots of stuff on the flickr to check out.

Zion Tree: one of a group of test transfers I did today with a homemade transfer film.

Today was a fun day, I fixed some issues with with my homemade transfer films, turns out I just needed to put masking tape around the back edges to give it a little more stiffness, now it will feed through the printer without jamming.

Speaking of the printer, that’s a whole other can of worms. There was a slight nozzle clog this morning, so I ran a number of head checks and then had to perform a bunch of head cleaning operations. As a result, the printer tries to clear the clog out of ALL of the print nozzles.  It doesn’t just work on the ones with clogs.  SO after replacing most of my inks a few days ago and having printed very little, I’m out of ink!

I did call the Epson customer service/support line to see if there was anyway to force the printer to just clean the clogged heads but they assured me that there isn’t anything within the Epson print utilities that allows that. So the nice customer service lady listened to my suggestion that the print utility be updated to allow this and then decided she could send me a “one time complimentary replacement (ink) set”.

Production is slightly hindered for now, but I’ll move on to make more transfer films and maybe do other prep work in the coming days.Carry on!

Gloss medium transfer lifting from homemade transfer film.

I’ve secured an awesome place to use as a studio for a few weeks. My step-father Paul is between renters in his town house, so for the month of December I’m using the living room as a experimentation space.  One of the best things about this gig is that the carpet is going to be replaced at the end of the month so I’m not even concerned with using a drop cloth while painting and spraying gesso and other things all about. I do however have to worry about the newly painted walls so I’ve built a bit of a spray area with some plastic sheeting.

Aside from the studio space being awesome, I have been experiencing some minor successes and set backs. The image transfers I have traditionally done, have relied on a few brands of inkjet paper, all have similar properties that allow the transfers to work, but they also all have the same limitation, none come in sizes larger than 8.5 x 11. I’ve tried calling customer support and in an attempt to reach the manufacturers in order to secure large off cuts from the manufacturing process.  Unfortunately these are all major companies that dont have the time or are unable to accommodate a request like mine.  So instead I have had to resort to experimentation in order to find another product or to create my own that will allow me to meet my goals.  So far a lot of my time has been spent waiting for things to arrive in the mail only to find out that it will not work.  Water slide decal paper for example,  doesn’t work, I only spent 5 days waiting to learn that.

After my early dissapointment with the water slide decal paper yesterday i took off and followed a few other hunches.  Later in the day i was making my own Transfer film, they work, but have their own setbacks, for example the printer hates to feed them, two out of four prints actually made it through the printer! It is also extremely time consuming to make the films so I hit the internet and found some companies that manufacture transfer films!  So i’ve ordered a sample pack and i’ll see if they work as well as the ones i’m making.  In the mean time I have also ordered higher quality ingredients for making my own films, that way i’ll be safe in the event that the pre-made stuff is a lost cause.

Anyway check out my flickr for updates and photos of me working and work getting done! Maybe even some previews of the work for the show.

In even more interesting news, Next week i will spend packing up and preparing for my Americorp job with the North West Service Academy. I will spend just over 5 months working on a trail crew in the Mt. Hood National forest. So far I have received e-mails from a few of my soon to be co-workers and house mates, and they really seem to be an interesting group. Which really i would expect a rag tag group of interesting people, it’s not just anyone who signs up to live in the woods and work HARD 10 hr days for popcorn & peanuts.

As excited as i am about going to to live in the woods and meet new people, it’s also a bit sad as i will be leaving my girlfriend, friends, and family for the duration of the experience. it’s so much fun to be a rambler, but it’s the connections to loved ones  at home that makes it a hard life to lead.

Hopefully i will get some fantastic photographs, I have already started probing my Flickr photostream for locations, and think i got a good lead from one of my favorite northwest photographers. check out Matt Abinante’s photostream and also Ben Canales’ Photostream.

Not much else to say right now, but i’m sure i will have some photos up soon, and more stories to come from Trail Days as well as my time in the west. 

My contribution to a notebook project

I was rather thrilled to learn that I was going to be involved with a notebook project, the kind where a friend hands or mails you a notebook in which you make some kind of contribution before passing it on. But I was worried about what I would do, I haven’t been drawing much lately, and I didn’t want to include a photo that I had taken for another purpose. Lucky for me, my inspiration came in the form of a Postage Due notification on packaging material that housed the notebook.  I talked to Brandi Krackass about my contribution and she pointed to the obvious, “Yep it has to involve quarters”

Step by step:
1.) Open notebook
2.) 3 thin coatings of gesso
4.) Scan packaging and three quarters
5.) Print Scan
6.) Prep gessoed  surface to take the image
7.) Squish print to surface… HARD
8.) Peel print off
9.) Dry
10.) Pass the book along.

I went for a walk in the woods near the home I grew up in. This time, I walked just a little further than I ever had before. Just beyond the threshold of my previous ventures I discovered this vacant farm. I spent some time exploring and snapping photos then continued a few more miles into the woods.

More on my Flickr.

Supporters of Wisconsin and other states workers show up to a rally in Philadelphia’s Love Park to show support for employees in states where collective bargaining by teachers and other state employees, is in jeopardy.

More photos