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More Foiling experiments

Angela PorterLeave a comment
More foiling experiments ©Angela Porter 2019
More foiling experiments ©Angela Porter 2019

The death of a laminator…

Another useless photograph, but I think you get some idea of how the foiling appears.

I’ve had a bit of a nightmare with the laminator. This morning it decided to terminally ‘eat’ a ‘foiling sandwich’ and there is no way I can get it out. I tried to put an A4 sheet through the laminator which meant that the folded ‘carrier’ paper had the fold to the side, not going through the laminator first. I think that’s what caused it all to get caught and stuck.

Lesson learned? Hopefully. I think I’m going to have to work on images that are A5 (UK) in size or less. Which is fine now I’m sure about that. However, I really was hoping to foil one of my A4 monogram images.

Ho hum. I shall purchase another laminator later today so I can continue working on it. The instructions with the foil say any home laminating machine will work with this particular foil.

About the foiled works…

Here’s what I’ve discovered so far.

Foiling works best on smooth paper, such as the heavyweight ‘premium’ paper I use in my printer. I do want to try Bristol Board as that is smooth and a bit more weighty again and stands up well to quite a few media.

Coloured cardstock, such as the dark blue example to the bottom left, doesn’t work quite so well as it’s not all that smooth. The foiling ends up a bit uneven and has a kind of ‘brushed’ look to it.

The copper foil I’ve used is amazing! It is like an interference ink or paint in that it’s colour changes from coppery-red to gold as it catches the light in different ways. I’m in love with this one for sure. It looks fab with turquoise blues and greens, a lot like the colours of verdigris.

I tried colouring the top left, top middle and bottom right images with Distress Inks after foiling. This worked brilliantly! It needs to be added after foiling; a little wipe with a dry paper towel removes any excess ink from the foil.

I’m not sure if you can see it, but the centre of the two mandalas at the top left and middle have some colour added to them. I used Staedtler Fineliners for the blue one and Zig Clean Colour Real Brush pens for the orange one.

The mandala at the top right I coloured using Chameleon markers and pencils after I’d foiled it. Not my best choice of colours, in my opinion, but it was an experiment. The alcohol inks stained the foil where I couldn’t keep the nib in the tiny spaces. The mandala was designed to be printed on A4 paper so the gaps weren’t quite so tiny, but I printed them at 4″ x 4″ just to try the foiling out.

I need to draw at sizes that it’s possible to foil successfully without killing a laminator off quickly in the future, and that means A5 or less in size. Unless I decide to ’tile’ the image in some way.

Future experiments in foiling…

There are some different papers I want to try. Bristol Board from either Frisk, Daler-Rowney or Winsor and Newton in particular. Strathmore is textured and I suspect it won’t work well, it’ll be more like the coloured card stock.

Coloured, heavyweight paper is a definite, particularly black I think. Just for the line art in foiling.

Hot-pressed, smooth watercolour paper may be worth a try, along with the smoother side of Claire-Fontaine or Daler-Rowney mixed media paper.

Different papers mean I can used different coloring media in different ways.

What else I have learned and what else I need to think about.

I really, really like digital colouring and I’m rather rusty with different traditional media.

I also need to think about what I can do with foiling and any market that I can create for myself with my art.

I’m really not at all good at promoting myself or my art and pricing work is so very difficult for me to do. It really is. I have a bit of a break in contracts at the moment (apart from editing some templates this week) and it’s something I really do need to turn my attention to. I create so much, but do so little with it.

Inktober 2018 – Day 7 – “Exhausted”

Angela PorterLeave a comment

Angela Porter Inktober 2018 Day 7 - Exhausted

Exhausted is how I feel today, so the prompt is very apt!

I woke with a migraine-type headache, and it’s only recently begun to lift, after quite a few Anadin Extras (it’s ok – I kept within the recommended dose!).

Headaches like this leave me exhausted afterwards; it’s only a good sleep that helps to remove the last remaining vestiges of them. Maybe I’ll nap in a while.

What hasn’t helped is yet another day of hammer-drilling next door. I’d’ve gone out if (a) I could see to drive properly and (b) I wasn’t expecting a delivery of a new printer.

My Epson printer died on me on Friday. Terminally died on me. It’s not been used that much. It has been used for scanning more than printing, but it just refused to work, no matter what I did.

I wasn’t very happy with it. The ink jet thingies didn’t work well after a while and I got streaks in the printing – no matter how often I cleaned them. I only ever used genuine Epson ink cartridges.

The scanner was really slow too.

So, I’ve returned to a Brother printer; this time a mono laser printer, and it arrived today and I managed to set it up relatively easily.

So, my Inktober drawing for today is above. I drew it on paper with a black Papermate Ink Joy gel pen. I scanned it in (didn’t check the settings so bits of top and left are cut off).

Then I threw it into Autodesk Sketchbook pro to change the colour to one that looks more washed out and exhausted, just how I feel – blue and grey and pale at the moment.

I wanted to add colour to the hand-lettering, but the headache means I couldn’t be arsed to do so at the moment.

My drawing skills aren’t brilliant on this one. The headache has affected my vision a tad as well as giving me slightly wobbly fingers. As the headache goes, all will be well again – and it’s nowt to be worried about; I get these headaches from time to time and I’ve not had one for more than a month now I think.

So, once I’ve finished this post, I’ll be off to make the great restorative – a good mug of Yorkshire tea! I think I may be able to face a little something to eat too, which could help too to lift some of the exhausted feeling.