Printing tiles

I think I have finally got the hang of printing tiles. It probably took me about 200 tiles to get the process to give good repeatable results. So I thought I would document the process for anyone else looking to do something similar.

Some of the results can be seen here:

cats, more cats, birds, QR codes

To sum it up in one line I use screen print technique with vinyl masks and under glaze in acrylic medium.

The process starts with underglaze powder which I get from bath potters and acrylic medium and screenprint medium. The media get mixed in equal parts by mass and then mixture is mixed in equal parts by mass with the underglaze powder.

(1 part acrylic medium : 1 part screenprint medium : 2 parts underglaze powder.)

Media before mixing

After everything is mixed

As you can see I mix it on a glass plate and ideally I would use a muller but I don’t have one, so a pallet knife must suffice for the time being. Once it is mixed, it needs to be passed through a screen to make sure it is lump free and won’t clog the printing screen. Some spreading back and forth with a pallet knife does the trick and i keep the storage pot underneath so that it can drop straight into it.

This results in smooth, lump free printing ink, which I store in a small self sealing plastic pot.

Now for the screen.

The “normal” way to produce a screen is photographically with emulations and washing and lots of faff. My method is to use a vinyl cutter (Silhouette Cameo) to cut a sticker that I sick to the screen. Much easier and great for short runs but it does limit the minimum feature to about 2mm square so no half-tone printing. Most of the time my work is silhouettes so there are a number of options for generating artwork. I tend to use my Samsung galaxy note or my Motion MC-F5 running Ubuntu and krita (A combo that makes a great graphics tablet for £100-ish). For QR codes there are plenty of web sites. In any case the idea is to get a black and white image of what is to be printed. In the software for the Cameo there is a handy trace function (based on Potrace for those that are interested) which then generates a cut path from the artwork. For things like the floppy disc tiles I am printing here I just found a photo of a floppy and drew the cut lines on the image in the software. Finally I draw a tile sizes square cut line around the design and flip everything before sending it to the machine to cut. The result:

To transfer this to the screen I use a low tack transfer paper:

peel off the backing and stick it to the screen, then remove the transfer paper:

finally, remove the bits I want the ink to come trough (in this case the grey window cover)

As the outline of the vinyl is the size of a tile this makes registering it on the tile quite easy. To make sure the tiles always remain in the same place I have some thin plywood “L”s that are taped to the base board. the screen also sits on one 1/4” thick ply spacers in the hinges to bring it to the correct hight for the tile:

(brown tape is just to stop leakage)

Brown parcel tape is used to mask off the rest of the screen and printing commences.

They go onto a ware board to dry for a bit then, where necessary, get the second colour and stamped on the back.

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Into a tile setter and then into the kiln (which I have put on wheels on a steel base so it can be loaded up next to where I am printing and wheeled off for firing) up to 960C in about 2 hours and then naturally cool

This fires on the underglaze and burns of the acrylic binder. Next glazing.

To glaze them, I use Duncan pure•brilliance™ Clear Dipping Glaze. I have decanted some into a plastic box and got the viscosity to 18secs by adding a little water. To mix the glaze I gently slosh it from side to side as violent shaking introduces air bubbles.  To do the dipping I made some dipping tongs from welding wire

Once all the bubbles and limps are dealt with using a small paint brush they go back in the setter for another firing 1060C for an hour

Result:

 

Photographing

For the last year this has been the bane of my life!!

I pride myself on being able to do or work out how to do most things but getting good product photographs has to be one of the hardest skills I have yet tried to master. I certainly have not mastered it yet but at least can now get acceptable results.

When I started doing jewellery I used a pair of Ikea desk lamps to light pieces and I generally just used by bench as a backdrop and had the items in their boxes. (see here) This was good enough for the purposes of documenting work and the black backdrop hid a multitude of sins. However if you try photographing an item on its own you need a lot more work to get a good result.

Traditionally silver would be photographed against a black velvet background but fashions have changed and colours and white backgrounds are the norm now. The problem is that if you screw up photographing black, you get a (to quote Father Ted) very very very very very very very very dark blue, or some other dark colour, which to to most people looks black. There is no need to get black of the backdrop to be priests socks black, just lay peoples socks black. However, photograph a white backdrop incorrectly and you get a definitely tinted outcome. This problem is compounded buy the fact that  websites often have pure white backgrounds so the contrast effect exasperates the situation and the tint is even more noticeable.

I tried white. I really did.But getting a white backdrop is actually quite hard. White paper, for example is often a bit yellow, white fabric shows every speck of fluff or hair it manages attractor and white perspex is very easy to scratch and shows fingerprints. So what to use?

Well going back to my bench photography days, wood is a good backdrop. the problem is it either needs to be shiny and new or old and battered.

You can see here how a small mark really shows up on this Ikea chopping board. Unfortunately the life scars on this piece of wood were to few and far between to be any use. All I got were pictures with dirty marks in them. Further more the scale of the grain is too big.

Here I used the wooden floor in mu house. Well battered, but again the grain is wrong, too small this time. (This is Ash wood should you be taking notes)

(see for sale on Etsy)

This one is against the raw ash veneered ply of a box easel, the grain is too detailed.

And here we have birch veneered ply. This is too light and it is very hard to get the colour right, the grain is a bit indistinct and a bit too detailed.

Finally I tried an off cut of redwood.

(see for sale on Etsy)

It has a good distinct and plain grain, it is quite yellow so any colour temperature adjustment doesn’t make it look fake and the know (the reason this bit of wood was cut off the end of a board) can provide some interest to the picture without being overwhelming. Further the graduation of grain lines means smaller things can be photographed on the left and larger things on the right.

It would appear that the perfect backdrop has a distinct texture that is about 1 order of magnitude below the size of the item and bit f colour to it.

With that in mind I went back to an old trick I had used a while ago, a cloth covered book.

(see for sale on Etsy)

Which I think works well.

Now for lighting!

Natural light is good. But 150 yeas of electrical illumination technology is more controllable. I tried with natural light outside but this was a bit of a disaster. The blue sky reflected in the silver and made everything look blue and cold. A cloudy day would be nice but getting enough light on a cloudy day I  found a bit of a challenge and that kink of limits you to photographing during the day and only on days where the weather is right.

Solution: ebay!!! I ordered a light tent for all of abut £15 and with that and some flashes I got better results but still poor. So taking the old adage that you can never have too much light (hey they filmed nuclear bombs going off and you don’t get anything much brighter) I also bought for all of £100 a set of soft-box lights. So now my set-up looks like this:

The side soft boxes have four 45w lamps in and the top one has a 135w lamp, all 5500K colour temp.

2 old books, my bit of wood and a plastic pot with some steel shot in it as a weight to hang the pendants from. The book that is standing up is up against a small wooden stand. Brooches are attached with a small blob of blu-tak when required. Hopefully I can now get everything photographed now.

Go look at my shop now and buy stuff to help me justify all this stuff. http://www.peterblacksart.com.