TWO METHODS FOR PHOTO TRANSFER ON LEATHER - The box Challenge

For the past 15 years I have been engaged on a single project making custom clamshell boxes for signed Modern First Editions, using many different design binding techniques such as tooling, onlays, inlays, and a variety of different methods of printing and photo transfer on leather.

These methods I briefly detailed in a previous article, basic techniques for printing on goatskin. 

The motivation to explore these techniques as always was the necessity to find easy methods for introducing a design element quickly, and where applicable avoid large amounts of tooling and onlay work - primarily to save time, but they also look cool too. 

Alongside these experiments, I was also looking for a way to print on leather without using blocks, mag plates, and half-tone polymer plates(all very good methods), namely photo transfer.

Having done some rudimentary woodblock printing, I had come across a useful tool called a blender pen. This felt tip pen is loaded with Xylene, and I had been using them to transfer an image from a photocopy onto a block for carving. 

After doing some initial transfers on skin with the Xylene pen, which worked fine, I quickly embarked on a determined quest to find a method that did not involve possibly damaging solvents.

So briefly I will give the pros and cons of the two methods of photo transfer that have given me the best results - none of which involve Acetone or Xylene.

1. MATTE MEDIUM 

Available in all art stores, Matte Medium is basically an acrylic.

1. Stipple matte medium onto copy.

2. Place copy face down onto area to be printed between acrylic boards with wax paper.

3. Press for 20 seconds.

4. Spray back side of the print with water, the image should show through.

5. Carefully rub fibres of the back of the paper, and gradually peel back the layers of paper.

6. take care not to be too rough and peel the image.

What you are essentially doing is gluing the image to the surface, so it's a very low-tech

solution.

Pros

quick

easy

effectively fool proof if done correctly

Cons

The glued area becomes stiff, making it difficult and problematic to use over areas that require flexibility, such as joints. If the area becomes cracked, the layer may peel, and nobody wants that, so avoid where possible using across the joint. This method is used best for inlays, and for images requiring great detail and half-tones.

2. PAPER LITHOGRAPHY 

This method basically turns your copy into a printing plate, making it able to be used over joints as only the ink adheres, so while you can use it over the joints and turn-ins without cracking or risk of peeling, its still delicate, best results are achieved in high contrast and black and white images.

1. Mix Gum Arabic with water in a 12oz bottle in a 1-1 or 50-50 solution.

2. Paste solution onto an acrylic board and place copy print side up on board.

3. Paste solution over the print, removing all bubbles making sure copy is pasted onto board

4. Sponge off plate with water, let dry for a few minutes, and brush over more solution.

5. Repeat 2 times before applying ink 

6. Ink plate after 5 minutes.

7. Remove any ink in the white areas with sponge and water.

8. Repeat 2 more times.

9. Peel up the copy, place it on leather and press for a few minutes, remove and peel before it dries.

Best results achieved in either method are made using smooth skins.....so regular goat is not so good, but smooth goat and calf can be used in any and all printing and transfer techniques to great affect, the longer any printing dries the better, and calfskin works very well with ink.

Thats all folks !

basic techniques for printing on goatskin

This post first appeared on the DBOA blog earlier this year, I am reposting it for the members of this blog.



Out of necessity in 2008-09, I worked hard on transforming the regular goatskin onlays I was using to decorate my boxes. I had already been working on the boxes for 3 years, and after completing a lot of regular tooled onlays, I needed to start using new techniques in order to keep the work fresh, and keep both myself and the client interested. I had done some stamped onlays, but limited the use of these for children's books, and other volumes that had distinct jacket designs. As in the set of C.S. Lewis, and boxes like the signed first edition of Camus' La Peste. However, I tend to avoid the use of plates where possible, for although they do save time and make the design process easier, they can give a box a generic machine made look. I had done lacunose on a box a few times, but that can be time consuming, and certainly not efficient when working on an edition. I needed a more inventive, artistic method to transfer an image onto goatskin, or to find new ways to work or transform the onlays.

It was with this in mind that I began printing on goatskin, by first carving images into blocks of wood. I took some fair goat, dyed it, inked up the blocks, and pressed them onto the pre-pared skins. The first question was, "should I pare the skins first or after printing?". The next issue to overcome was the exact method of pressing in the studio, without the use of either a table-top adana, or any other hand-cranked letterpress machine, which I would later employ to great effect.

I experimented at first with hand techniques similar to those used in Japanese wood-block printing, but found it difficult to get enough pressure. Lastly, resorting to the use of a nipping press. You can get good results using a nipping press, but it requires a deft touch. The problem with using a nipping press is that all the pressure is exerted on all points of the block at the same time, which can lead to bad bleeding. Using a cylinder is much more preferable for this reason, although even with a cylinder press its possible to bleed an image with either too much ink, or too much pressure. If you are going to try this yourself, care must be taken not to smudge away the image while pasting onto the surface. The method of pressing, and the fact that the onlay is already pared to 0.10 microns, means that the image tends to be more delicate.

I used this method quite well in Cormac Mcarthy's "Child Of God, and Budd Schulberg's"Waterfront", and some others, however having had some success with rudimentary printing on goat, decided it warranted using more complex methods.

In the next development, I made regular polymer plates (Box-Car Press), for use on a hand-cranked Vandercook cylinder press. By"regular", I mean a plate that has a positive and negative printable area. Images from distinctive jacket designs were relayed to the plate maker. With the help of friend and print artist Mindy Beloff (Intima Press)we set them up on her Vandercook. I brought both pared fair goat, and un-pared goat, and it became clear right away that we were going to get much better results more easily with the unpared goat. I need not have been concerned about the paring, as with enough skill and enough sharp blades, onlays could be comfortably pared down to .10 - 0.12 microns on the scharfix without stretching and distorting the images...mind you, it doesnt hurt to have a few spares!!!

The next step was to see if the half-tone polymer plates I had used in the reproduction of some famous civil war photography for the endpapers of a binding of Walt Whitman's "Wrenching Times", which I was working on in 2009, would print well enough on goatskin. They did, heres a tip - ink up the plate 5-6 times before rolling over the with the goat. The results were very impressive, and a long way from the rudimentary wood block printed onlays. The half-tone plate works using a seires of small dots allowing for a variety of tones in the image, much the way older printing technologies have worked. What about running the skins throught the scharfix. No problem!, again no stretch, but always advisable to have spares. It is still possible to rub the ink off by over pasting the onlays, and if the onlay is too thin, so caution must always be heeded, but the onlays were much more stable than the wood block printed onlays of before.

This technique provided me with opportunity to transform the images, whether by dyeing, distorting, tooling. Its a good way to add an element to a design without too much hand tooling, but using photography printed by half-tone on goatskin can get old very quickly, if its over used , or not used in combination with other techniques, or it is not essential to the overall atmosphere of the design. In the case of the binding of "Wrencing Times", the images used not only are some of the first ever photographs to be taken in history, and some of the most expressive and famous images of the civil war era, they go well with gaylord's wood engravings inside the book. The images though, have not been used without some element of transformation, ie , they have been deliberated distorted by colouring over them, in the hope of giving them more subtlety, and have been surrounded by broken surfaces of gold leaf, to give an atmosphere of a faded, empty, and perhaps forgotten glory.

The Latest method for printing on goatskin I have used (october 2011), is quick, easy, and very effective.

Photo-transfer, or off-set printing on animal skins for bookbinding is nothing new, but the methods I have used before in combination with acetone were in no way as effective as this last method. You do not need plates, a vandercook or proofing press, inks, or any other solvents. It is a very basic method, rudimentary, and possibly not the most tidy, or elegant method out there.....but it does work, and work well. Take an image, remembering to reverse it before printing on a high quality printer, or make a xerox copy - colour or black+white. Cover the image to be transfered with a layer of liquitex matte medium and press. If you are carfeull enough you should be able to remove the paper after drying using water and a piece of cotton. If you are too aggressive you can break the polymer bond, leaving craters, so take your time and do it in stages. This method is good for inlays or for parts of the cover that do not require movement...such as the joints and turn-ins.....as the surface will break, and so too the image....The images used for a box made for Woody Guthrie's own copy of "American Folksong", are over 12"x9" large, and the transfer is of a very good quality black and white, managing to capture all tones light to dark.

This last technique has great potential for making endpapers, doublures, or for use in covers as part of more complex collage work.


My experiments with printing on goatskin, and transforming goatskin in general will continue, and I'm sure there are many more techniques out there I could put to good use.

La fete de boites continue....

Yes thats right...more boxes....a selection of the latest includes my 3rd gravity's rainbow,and  a box for a signed Hemingway.









The Hemingway title is stamped, as there were 2 editions(both boxed),and the lower case type was requested for this.

Other than that, all of the boxes since the middle of 2006 are hand-lettered.That is not to say that I have not used plates to stamp onlays..more about that later.I avoid it as much as possible, because it can make the boxes look generic, but in those cases where there is a specific requirement to reproduce particular artwork, it is usefull

Printed onlays with regular and half-tone plates, taken from the dust jackets

The Box Challenge - coming attractions

The Third Man......and Killer Angels

yes more half-tone printing, and more civil war
keep watching....

Wrenching Times....halftone on goatskin

...more time with Mindy, at her studio in union square, printing the third half-tone polymer plate, on her vandercook Uni III(it has an adjustable bed)which she recently repainted.
The results were great, the softness of the skin proved very suitable for this style of printing, giving a rich deep inking, but not overly inked, picking up every detail and subtle contrast, that maybe is more difficult to capture on a paper surface.
The vellum did not come out that great....here's a tip, if you are going to print on vellum, do not over colour it, a half-tone print will be too subtle to make out.
...having my options limited in this fashion will help me move forward with the design.
Forwarding continues

Box challenge Day 50..D-Day approaches...

So...the first batch will be out this week,and pics will be shown when finished....
It rained all day, while I was tooling, but the weather broke around sunset, and the light came raking in across the park lighting up my own tree silhouettes(more block printing..I will have start something new soon!)I took a picture... the top left corner of the view..It's not a mocking bird but it was out there.... all on its own!!
it was a good day
Part 2 of the eggshell monday

Waterfront - never take the short-end money

"It wasn't him, Charley, it was you.
Remember that night in the Garden you came down to my dressing room and you said,
"Kid, this ain't your night. We're going for the price on Wilson."
You remember that? "This ain't your night"! My night!

I coulda taken Wilson apart! So what happens? He gets the title shot outdoors in the ballpark and what do I get? A one-way ticket to Palooka-ville!

You was my brother, Charley, you shoulda looked out for me a little bit. You shoulda taken care of me just a little bit so I wouldn't have to take them dives for the short-end money.......

......You don't understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it.

It was you, Charley."

More block printing, and strangely enough, more crucifixes!
Just a coincidence ......
Dyed goat onlays, printed with stills from the movie.In particular, from the famous scene above.

Child Of God - complete

Done!
Onlays,tooled in black and gold.

Block printing on Dyed Goat

It was an exciting day in the bindery today,pure enjoyment!I had set aside today for block printing some dyed goat ready for use in designs.The blocks were carved from a plywood,the goat pared,all I needed was some ink???!!!
My friend and colleague Amber Mccmillan of Post Editions was able to help me out, so jumped on the bike, through flushing, bed-sty,to her new studio, a pleasant space with vandercooks ,a platen press with an amazing flywheel, and a hand operated guillotene.More about Amber and her work in later posts.
The artwork is for "Waterfront", and "Child of god", and both will be completed forthwith......
uhum...yes, that is my face!!