Printing on Plastic

 I secured this big piece of plastic -- I think it's a tile for a dropped ceiling -- and used it for my next series of monoprinting experiments.  I was hoping to find a way to create marble-like images without the fuss and bother of a traditional size and using thickened dyes instead of paint.

So I didn't scratch my brand-new piece of plastic, I got the plastic combs from my marbling supplies for combing through the dyes.

But as soon as I laid the fabric down, the intricate fine lines were smashed and lost.  So I found that if I laid down a layer of plain thickener and then dropped on the thickened dyes and combed through, there was more of that lovely patterning.

 I didn't use any resists other than the base layer of thickener and, yes, there are some dogs here.

 I had a lot of fun smooshing the dye around on the plastic -- I found that if I didn't clean the plastic of the dyes from the previous print, they would mix with the plain thickener and provide a bit of color in the background.

So none of these are really white (although they look that way to me in the photos).  And as long as I stayed away from combining colors that would create mud, it was a pretty successful venture; although I was not really able to create fine marbled patterns because the dyes don't spread like paint on size.  Oh -- and it's good to wear gloves to do this.