>The image survives firing to
>cone 08 ( 945 C) and comes out looking like red iron oxide ( ochre) and no
>longer smears to the touch so you can glaze over it with a transparent
>glaze. Trouble is, its hard to get a strong image- tends to be
>wishy-washy, though the definition is very precise, more so than with
>dichromated colloid images in my experience. I got this out of Paul
>Scott's book Ceramics and Print, but Dennis told me Les Lawrence was doing
>it too and there may be others out there in cyberspace. What we need is a
>way of intensifying the image or getting more of the toner to leave the
>paper and go on to the clay and if oxides or salts of cobalt, copper,
>manganese etc could be incorporated in the toner, then of course the way
>would be open to colour-photocopier-ceramics. Its so diabolically simple
>in principle that I would like to make it work even if its a betrayal of
>all that alt-photo-process stands for - or is it ?
This is exactly what I have been trying to tell Terry King a long time ago
on this list. All pigments consist of certain colorants. Many of these
colorants give colors for certain ceramic processes. Colors will vary
depending on clay type, firing temperature and atmosfere etc.
How about using decal paper instead of ordinary photocopy paper ? Certain
color printers would accept that. Or perhaps the other way: using tissue
transfer paper in the printer, that will allow you to transfer all the
pigments onto clay. Try to use a sponge with some liguid soap on it and rab
it on the back side of the tissue.
Quality of pigments varies a lot from one printer to another, ask Sil
Horowitz he can tell you more about it. I am not sure one can put more of
the ceramic colorants into the printing ink. But you can try to do the
same that is done to get the photocopies onto textiles: iron it on the back
side (if you print on wet or leather hard clay).
Regards, Galina.
Galina Manikova (galina@online.no)