Printing Onto Wood.

After my last experiment with using an inkjet printer to print onto contact paper failed, I figured I would give using an inkjet printer to print to wood a go - it seemed like an interesting thing to do, given that a majority of tutorials and blog entries I found said that it wouldn't work.

I found a YouTube tutorial where the creator said that she and her sister both used an inkjet printer. Much to my surprise, it was basically the same as every other "don't-use-an-inkjet!" tutorial I had seen: apply a gel medium to the wood, place the print ink-side to the gel, let it dry over night, then remove the paper under running water. 

Obviously, I had my doubts. 

 

For my test run, I didn't bother leaving it overnight. I let it dry for a few hours and then started the process of removing the paper. As a result, some of the gel medium hadn't dried properly. I ended up rubbing some of it off and getting holes in my image! 

I let the wood dry a few times, and always felt like I still hadn't removed all of the paper. Even now I'm not so sure that I've removed all of it, but I do think that it leaves quite an interesting effect. And either way, I have achieved using an inkjet printer to print on wood! 

The next step is to take a photo to use for this assignment, and then to print it to my wooden box. At this point in time, I'm leaning towards pictorialism as a movement, because printing to wood gives some lovely, old-looking effects that will go well with this.