Alcohol Gel Transfer

I have been learning and trying out new techniques in my pursuit of mixed media art that utilizes a photograph as a starting point. Today’s image was made using a technique called alcohol gel transfer. This is based on the fact that most inkjet printer inks dissolve in alcohol, assuming you can get the ink onto an alcohol-coated substrate before the ink dries or the alcohol evaporates.

Garden Tree Alcohol Gel Transfer © Howard Grill

In this particular case, the substrate was watercolor paper, the alcohol was in the form of hand sanitizer gel which I coated onto the paper with a brush, and the image itself was printed on a plastic transparency sheet. It comes out of the printer and is rapidly flipped onto the gel and gently pressed. There are some tricks in terms of when to coat the paper, how hard to press, and how to get ink that doesn’t seem to want to transfer to come off, but it really isn’t too hard to learn once you work through these issues.

No two transfers of the same image will ever be the same. That is part of the beauty of these hand techniques. And, of course, the result can be photographed, adjusted as you see fit in Photoshop, and reproductions printed in any size. But I always save the original piece as well.

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