Tending to the Pilot Light Image Transfers

IMAGE TRANSFERS GALORE!!!

We played with CitraSolv... Concentrate... don't be fooled by any substitutes, nor by the nice looking cleaning solution in a spray bottle, you must use the Concentrate, and boy-howdy, does it ever transfer images with clarity and precision!

Check out their website for ideas and information on creative uses of this product:

Artists Page

In the Tuesday Tending to the Pilot Light Session, we had one student working on covering an entire coffee dyed t-shirt with toner based images:

She has since purchased her own bottle of Citrasolv and is working away on even more projects... We will hopefully see some photos of the finished products, or maybe even treated to a show and tell one of these days!

Another student experimented with transfers to tissue and handmade paper - she even got this gorgeous print to stick to the rose petal embedded in the paper fibres:

She then moved onto a more complex piece that finished up with application of paint and gold leaf:

You can see the multiple layers of images, from a bull fight to musical bars to the wrought iron deco motif underneath it all.  The red, gold and dark black are acrylic paint details added at the end.  Remember that for text or music, the copy must be made backwards.... many copy machines have an automatic reversal function on their control panels.

While my students were transferring and transferring, I experimented with different mediums:

This was a picture cut out of a National Geographic magazine.  The grey "frame" around the image was the result of the ink melting and bleeding off the edge of the picture as I applied the Citrasolv to the back of the picture.

This image contains both stamped and transferred images (Toner-based copies and a 1976 newspaper) augmented with magic markers... there did not seem to be any clarity or adhesion issues with layering transfer images.

This piece has a toner based image transferred to tissue paper and then the ghost image of the gal in the sailor shirt applied twice more.  I would have tried for a third ghost, but the back of the paper was pretty much shredded from the burnishing.

On Thursday, we created a couple more complex pieces:

Look at the details of these winged creatures! They look absolutely real, and they transferred beautifully onto the uneven surface of multi layers of handmade and tissue paper

This is one of mine... once again, I can not resist the black frame of a record album

This is another piece I made, starting with a sheet of paper I had saved from an intaglio printing session, the blue scrappy bits were the residue of ink left on the bottom of the plate - random and beautiful.  Next I transferred a picture of two turn of the century butchers, then re transferred the right hand brother onto blue tissue paper since his face did not come out (I used too much citrasolv and melted the ink into a black blot)  I was unhappy with the tissue paper result so just tore the tissue off in bits, then transferred bunches of faces into the dark area on the right and added some of my new favorite: Pearl Ex powdered paint just to add some mystery.  The frame is made with bits of encyclopedia text glued down with gel medium.

All in all, I think this is a remarkable process and can not wait to work with it again!

Have a great week!

Take care,

Liza