Tag: resin

  • Waiting Game

    Waiting Game

    Convergent series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, blue, green, red, vibrant, wedge, shape
    Katabatic Wind, 2016 — Convergent :: (click to see more)

     

    Everything is ordered and the resin arrives tomorrow hopefully followed closely by the face mounted film and then… I pour.

  • Face Mounting

    Face Mounting

    Convergent series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, red, blue, green, vibrant, wedge, shape
    Gust Front, 2016 — Convergent :: (click to see more)

    Waiting to see how the backlit film facemounts to the back of the plexi before I order the rest of the resin but looks promising. Then it’s pour, pour, pour as I practice my careful no-air-bubbles clear film rolling technique. Almost there!

  • Epic Fial – Rinse, Repeat

    Epic Fial – Rinse, Repeat

    I poured the next layer of resin and damn if it didn’t go REALLY well – especially after all my anxious planning and scheming. I switched my measuring and second stage mixing gear to glass away from plastic after I found during extensive vacuum testing – which almost melted my pump – that the plastic was actually porous and introducing new air into the resin mix – who woulda thunk that?!!

    Mould Building #11
    Mould Building #12

    The pour had virtually no air bubbles and I poured it oh so delicately to not introduce new bubbles – which actually went very well. The roll out of the first ink transfer layer went very well also with no new air introduced and minimal overflow of resin.

    I felt really good that night – a huge sigh of relief that I was finally successfully underway. Riding that high I took a look at the piece the next morning to further revel in that feeling of success. And this is what I saw…

    Mould Building #13

    millions of teeny tiny bubbles all over the place where exactly none had been the night before. What the hell! For two days I hummed and hawed over this with friends and associates, also examining it carefully with a loupe trying to understand what had happened.

    Two more days later those teeny tiny bubbles had become this…

    Mould Building #14
    Mould Building #15
    Mould Building #16

    Yep, that’s the end of that. You can see the teeny tiny bubbles are still there but these new pancakes have developed underneath at the surface of the backlit film. I’m still not entirely sure what reaction is going on here but HOPEFULLY it’s the backlit film material and NOT the ink. I’m about to do another pour over top of the first ink transfer layer – which by the way went pretty well also – surprise surprise. And guess what, the mould released perfectly too leaving an almost perfect block of resin – wow, so much success only to be crushed by this unknown, unforeseen problem. Depending on if new pancakes emerge after this next test pour or not should tell me if the ink is reacting with the resin or not. Oh, and then one side of the mould broke off – gotta re-glue that too. What next?!!

    Needless to say … I am very upset – and anxious about this next test. If pancakes appear, that’s it for using this urethane resin and back to testing other materials – resin or otherwise. Gah, so close!

  • Big Time

    Big Time

    Convergent series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, red, blue, yellow, vibrant, wedge, shape
    Ball Lightning, 2016 — Convergent :: (click to see more)

    At long last I’m actually ready to pour the resin. Everything is levelled out so the resin will flow evenly. Got a way to clamp the form closed and another way to seal up the seams so resin doesn’t drain out the cracks plus another way to roll out the print layers so bubbles don’t get trapped underneath. Hopefully the form is sufficiently slippery that it releases from the hardened resin. That would wreck everything if it doesn’t.

    Crossing my fingers – big time.

    Mould Building #6
    Mould Building #7
  • Rebuild

    Rebuild

    Convergent series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, orange, green, red, vibrant, wedge, shape
    Downdraft, 2016 — Convergent :: (click to see more)

    Got both sides of the mould glued together as you see below and tidied up the corner joints but as I was setting up to glue the first outer brace the mould tipped over and broke apart. Grrr.

    Rebuild! Clearly it’s delicate so going to put it together differently this time. Double grrr.

    mould building #3
    mould building #4
  • Mould Building

    Mould Building

    Convergent series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, blue, red, orange, green, vibrant, wedge, shape
    Confluence, 2016 — Convergent :: (click to see more)

    I’ve begun to build the resin pouring mould – so far it’s working. Loving the plastic cup spacers held together and taped to my work light to keep them positioned. This whole thing is using my typical hacked together builder will approach. With any luck it’ll all come together though.

    Mould Building With Plastic Beer Cups & Tape – High Tech!
    Mould Building With Plastic Beer Cups & Tape – High Tech!

     

  • Progress

    Progress

    Convergent series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, burnt orange, green, muted, smear, streaks, shape
    Line Squall, 2015 – Convergent :: (click to see more)

    Feeling energized this afternoon – after definitely determining urethane resin is the way to go – transparent, clear and much less carcinogenic/smelly than polyester resin. A few items left to work out but feeling ready to actually proceed with volumetric printing Light Signatures. First step is make a smaller test piece to work out the process but also to generate an example to show.

    One slight issue – the pieces will be horrendously heavy – a 1×1.5m piece will be 260kg. Yikes – going to need a fork lift. For this reason and the high production cost, large might not be the way to go. We’ll see.

  • Volumetric Prints

    Volumetric Prints

    Light Signatures series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, mauve, blue, turquoise, muted, stripes, streaks, lines, pattern
    Private Discussion In Mauve, 2014 – Light Signatures :: (click to see more)

    A friend recently showed me a kickstarter project that has some interesting similarities to how I was considering printing these images. Although they go about it by stacking together a series of clear plates with printing on them – whereas I was considering building up layers of ink on clear polyester resin. But I think the result is fairly similar and very cool. They call it volumetric printing and the prints are a kind of three dimensional hologram of objects encased in a solid clear cube. Take a look here for a visual and at the kickstarter here for a full description.

    These objects this brother and sister team are making will be small – up to 4″x6″x3″ whereas I’m contemplating something much larger – huge in fact – perhaps 48″x72″x3″. It’s still a massive experiment for me and will require a separate clean, dust free space to try it out in. One with ventilation or far removed from living breathing things as the polyester resin emits some incredibly poisonous volatile organic compounds – VOCs for the rest of us – the stuff that makes you high but kills brain cells at a prodigious rate and eventually gives you cancer and all kinds of other ills like skin ulcers and such. Nice stuff.

    This is assuming I’m able to transfer the ink to the resin as I’ve seen done in a youtube video – very cool idea by the way – and assuming I’m able to break the images into layers in a way that speaks to their internal shape and movement.

    There’s also a serious technical problem to consider and somehow work around. Normally I would want to break an image into layers with darkest objects on the back layer and lightest objects on the top layer… but I can’t do that. In fact I have to do the exact opposite. And this is simply because printing inks are additive not subtractive – meaning the more ink I print in an image the darker the image gets – and it’s impossible for me to print white. There are printers with a white ink channel but mine isn’t one of them. So white is assumed – as in supplied by the white base of the paper. All this means is lighter objects have less ink and require more light to transmit from the back of the print to the front. Darker objects are a build up of multiple layers of ink and lighter objects are made up of layers with ink holes topped by a very light ink layer.

    But seeing Shawn and Christina’s completed volumetric objects I’m thinking this problem is not such a big deal after all.

    First things first – I need to complete the Light Signatures images. Which I’m aggressively doing now – aiming for the end of June. Wish me luck.

  • Resin Trouble

    Resin Trouble

    Light Signatures series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, red, pink, green, orange, vibrant, swoops, streaks, drapes, pattern
    Draped Yellow Green Over Pink, 2013 – Light Signatures :: (click to see more)

    Been working on the book today – sounds ominous calling it “the book” but there you go. It’s actually a touch more difficult than I thought it would be but mostly the hard part is editing which images to include and then constructing a narrative that makes sense. Feels like I don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to this so I’m completely relying on intuition.

    The design and layout are pretty firmly formed in my mind so now that I have a first cut of the images and narrative I’ve actually slammed it together quickly just so I can get a feel for the flow.

    Also did more research into the resin work and discovered that I’m going to have to use polyester resin instead of epoxy resin. Epoxy resin has a slight yellow colour tint to it that with thicker pours will become too dense. No problem right? Yep – polyester resin produces massive amounts of VOC’s (carcinogenic volatile organic compounds) – cancer causing smells to you and me. Not going to work in my studio or anywhere in this building that’s for sure. This is a serious problem. I currently don’t have the ability to rent a separate space and neither can I create some kind of franken-ventilation setup here in my studio.

    Going to have to contemplate this for a bit and see if I can’t temporarily borrow some space or maybe even do some resin tests outside. Ah well.

    You know what they say about progress – 2 forward 1 back.

  • A Book

    A Book

    Light Signatures series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, blue, orange, vibrant, metallic , pattern
    Deep Blue Refracted Orange, 2013 – Light Signatures :: (click to see more)

    Began working on a book of images today to use as a leave behind when I meet with galleries. But I’m kind of excited by the possibility of offering it as an ebook for free on my site and also as a hardcover for sale. I spent a good amount of time researching and trying to find a print on demand publisher with decent colour and quality – which not surprisingly was harder than expected.

    Next step is complete the design then make some to see how they actually turn out. Difficult to judge the colour quality without a test at least. Now I’m also excited by the idea of making a book to accompany the Light Signatures work … once it’s complete.

    Speaking of which I’ve kind of started experimenting with production of the Light Signatures images. Ordered some clear film, worked out a process for separating the images into visual elements for printing as individual layers and ran a small print test on the film – which looks pretty good. Next step is to start fiddling with the resin and see how well it transfers the ink pigment from the film so I can build up layers of colour.

    Hope it works. Alternative to this organic manual process would be to 3D print it somehow in clear acrylic – if that even exists. Now that would be very cool.

  • Lozengey Resiny Blobs

    Lozengey Resiny Blobs

    Light Signatures series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, blue, brown, muted, waves, patterns
    Blue Wave Mauve Shore, 2013 – Light Signatures :: (click to see more)

    I finally had a visualization of the way I think I’ll make the Light Signatures images into objects. All along now I’ve wanted them to have a depth consistent with the way I often see things. I’ve got screwbally eyes – to put it bluntly.

    Both of my eyes are far sighted but my right eye is coke bottle material – consequently my left eye is my dominant one. I’ve recently switched from glasses to contact lenses – which I love. No more unable to read my phone or something in the night when I blunder awake or at any other time I don’t have glasses on or handy.

    Anyway, my skewed vision has contributed hugely to the way I visualize and make images – including the contrast and content I’m drawn to. One of the interesting things – the one which actually led me down my current path to build unique image blocks out of the Light Signatures images – was when I noticed I was seeing a kind of three dimensional relief when I moved my head. Objects were coming out of the flat page at me and shifting their relation to each other when I moved my head. Neat huh? Funky that’s for sure – and at times distracting in everyday normal situations like oh I don’t know… driving. I really noticed it while working on curating my pal Paedric’s exhibition of elapsed images of dancers which is when I got the idea for trying this.

    I see the pieces as oblong, thick, lozengey, (if that’s a real word – well I guess it is now) resiny, blobs – with image elements deconstructed into layers, built up within the clear resin of the lozenge so that when you the viewer shift your gaze the image caught within will shift in turn. You too will experience what I see – or as close an approximation as I’m able to make.

    Simpler is better – no more light boxes and paraphernalia – just the image entrapped in resin like a prehistoric insect in amber.