I saw this artwork by photographer Amanda Weil, in House Beautiful and I thought the idea of a transparent or translucent image printed on glass was intriguing. Old daguerreotypes were printed on glass, so the idea could be adapted for some very steampunk images.
Weil makes furniture and screens as well as wall art, but for the DIY photographer, I'd look into Fracture. You can get an 18 inch diagonal print on glass for $35. According to their FAQ, "You'll be able to select "No Mount" for just the opaque printed glass or "Transparent" for the printed glass without any white background." I think that, paired with a sepia or black and white toned photo, would make for a impressive wall.
9 comments:
Very pretty. With the transparency feature, it's like having custom stained glass... or a custom frame around the real world.
I see that for similar effects on a smaller scale, there are various inkjet transfer tools available to artists. Most involve putting an adhesive on the surface, so achieving transparency is the difficult part.
I also found mention of something called "Transfer Artist Paper" which mentions overlapping images, but I haven't found examples of how transparent/translucent the adhesive is.
what a great idea and a good site to know about ! i like the idea of getting a tiny portrait printed on the glass for a vignette or perhaps to carry on your person...
in response to Rain Barrel Collector's ideas about a DIY, i had a friend in art school who did transfers with acrylic matte medium and photocopies. i would imagine this could be done on glass, so long as you're careful not to press so hard as to break it. i don't know which would be better, matte or gloss medium, for these purposes but if memory serves, it dried clear so it might be a possibility.
after a quick google, here's a site that looks to describe the process:
http://www.calsk8.com/zeitgeist/acrylicgeltransfers.htm
usually the transferred image would be coming out backwards but if you're printing onto the back of the glass, it would be right-side again, so that's kind of neat. you could even paint with some tinted medium on top of the transfer to add a layer darkness/color/effects to increase the old-timey look. a lot of options there.
Yes, I saw similar descriptions of techniques, such as a laser printer's image can be removed but not an inkjet on paper because the ink penetrates and dyes the paper. But an inkjet can often be used by having it print on a laser printer's transparency sheet. A laser printer glues the image to the paper/plastic by melting, so its transparency sheet is rather smooth and the inkjet ink just sits on the surface. A transparency designed for inkjet use has a surface which holds the ink better -- and for doing a transfer we don't want the ink to be held too well.
I learned some other techniques as well, such as versions where a paper page is glued to material and then water and rubbing is used to remove most of the paper.
You're also right about mirror image reversal. Many graphic editing (or viewing) programs let you flip an image left-right before printing.
G'day,
daguerreotypes were photographed directly onto polished silver, not glass.
oh i forgot about that, was thinking of ambrotypes !
Wonderful! Thanks for the tip.
Actually, for DIY you can use the medium for glass paints, such as Vitreo 160. It requires heat setting, so the pieces tend to need to be small. It works quite well with laser prints and some better inkjet (Epson for ex). Here's an example of some I tried http://www.flickr.com/photos/27085919@N07/6688321475/
That is very helpful. It provided me a few ideas and I'll be posting them on my web site eventually. I'm bookmarking your site and I'll be back again. Thank you again!
New shinies (or dusties?) to show you! http://www.restorationhardware.com/catalog/category/products.jsp?categoryId=cat1653014
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