FIRST RESULTS OF SILK TEST PRINTING

WHITE MATTE  CLEAR MATTE SEMI-GLOSS MATTE DIGITAL GROUNDS
                [THESE 3 VERTICAL LEFT  ROWS ARE INK AID]                     [GOLDEN ON RIGHT]

 This is the first row of my Silk Test [from the left hand side above]

WHITE MATTE INK AID


My biggest disappointment was that none of the silk really took well to the kind of carving and burning I do with my various wood burning and heat tool.  I wanted it to act like the Tyvek but it didn't, instead it followed grain lines when it burned and simply looked burnt.  Not exactly what I was looking for.  

I have the heaviest silk(Charmeuse) in the centre with the lightest(Organza) on the bottom and Habotaii the lighter at the top. All started off a light cream to lessen the variables.  I put the Charmeuse in the middle as it is the heaviest weighted silk and I was expecting darker more intense colours which would be a good comparison for the lighter weight Habotai and the very light,translucent Organza. The results indeed showed the Charmeuse printed silk as quite dark and highly defined images but I was surprised at the clarity and dark values in the Habotaii as well!  The Organza was definitely lighter with less of the dark values, no surprise really.  The hand of all changed dramatically.  Much stiffer and more dense which has some value as well! The darker the print the less transparency which was really brought home to me! 

BTW!!! I have just discovered the latest Photoshop Elements 11 which has light pages rather than the darker ones so I think I'm in Photoshop heaven at the moment.

Back to the test--Kathyanne White's mini workshops-"Digital Printing Silk Surfaces" & "Designing Intriguing Surfaces" were particularly helpful although I still needed to do it myself as I am so tactile & visual! Kathyanne has really got some great videos and pdf's with a tremendous amount of information.