Sunday 10 August 2014

Rusty techniques

A fever of rusting has afflicted some creative friends recently. The shapes and marks they have achieved have been both fascinating and intriguing but the colour is the thing that piqued my interest - maybe this is the way to introduce some natural colour to my prints.


First rust print- washers, screw heads and alan keys all found in an old tin in the garage.


Leaving things sat on the paper overnight made shapes too strong to over print.


Randomly placed pieces, lifted before the rust print is too strong and then re-placed to create overlaps has better potential for me.
I found that spraying a much recommended tea solution added too much colour to the paper, but a very salty solution sprayed from a plant mister released the rust print in a controllable way.


Delicious marks in close up.


A large washer, found appropriately in the print co-op car park, produced rust that was too strong for the final image, but shows there could be potential.
Next step is to print on the testers shown above.

2 comments:

LAC EMP 2020 said...

I've messed about with rusting for a few years and there's a school of thought that says it's a continuous process and supposedly not archival, but I've found it very stable and love the idea of printing over it in a controlled way. Great final photo. Will be interested to see how you develop this Wendy.

Sue Brown said...

O-Oh colour creeping in. Potential indeed, perhaps we need to collaborate as you can add rust to enamel!!!??? X