Testing, Testing, Testing.

 To continue with my cracked mud and water project I wanted to use some of my own photos of various patterns that I had observed on water. However, I first had to determine which material took the print best, so I started out printing on silk fabric that I ironed onto some freezer paper. The colours were very pale and the edges of the paper curled up during printing and almost jammed in the printer. You can see some black ink on the lower right hand corner. Not the best outcome really.

 This time I printed on some Lutradur that had been sealed with gel matt medium. Better, but still not what I was looking for. The colours are brighter than on the silk, but not bright enough.

 Now some comparison with silk, Lutradur and some commercially treated fabric designed to use in a domestic printer. The middle sample is the fabric.

 

 It would appear that the treated fabric gives the best result for my purposes. Here are 2 more water patterns with one of the earlier ones.

Now I have 6 different water patterns printed onto fabric to play with against the background of the cracked mud. I might need to make another one however to continue the orange colour that is in the lowest piece here and will show in the cracked mud background. The actual samples are much more green than they show here, sort of a turquoise colour rather than pale blue.