Smith's cream to create shadow?

[Felix Marcano]

Hi everyone. I'd like to screenprint some shadows on a piece of glass, but I don't have any clear screen ink. Can I tint some smith's cream & screen print it?

Thanks,
Felix

[John Studden]

Felix, Smiths cream is just an additive to slow the drying of paint & cannot be used by itself. If you want to create suttle shades use 1-shot tinting clear mixed with the approprate 1-shot enamel, this will work as well as any other method. Smiths cream is normally used for blending when an extended drying time is needed..............John

[Mike Jackson]

Felix,
I assume you are asking this question just to get a feel of whether you are on the right track? Otherwise, refer to my recent response which suggests you will get the most benefit by doing your own tests.

Based on doing my own tests, I wouldn't consider Smith's Creme as an option. Personally, if I were going to try to screen print a shade or other element, I'd wait until my can of clear screen ink arrived from the supplier. It is designed to be the right consistency for screen printing. Then, of course, I'd try a few test prints to find out if I needed to add specific amounts of colors if tinting, or specific amounts of oil size if trying to surface gild.

Is any of this "test" advice starting to soak in? I believe you will find you will save yourself a lot of time and money by investing in a few tests as a daily routine when trying new processes. Besides the hundreds of small test pieces we might have here in the shop at any one time, I also know other people go through the same effort. I saw dozens of small test pieces in Noel Weber's place last time I was there.

As I think about some of my advice, maybe I should also suggest people do a 4' x 5', extremely complicated project sign on their first go around. Once they blow a lot of time, money, effort and brain time, the concept of doing the small. quick, cheap test pieces would make more sense?

Mike

[Felix Marcano]

Thanks John & Mike.

Mike, yes, I wanted to know if this was doable. & no, I can't wait for the ink since I gotta finish this stuff for a show next week. I guess it'll have to go without a shadow

John, thanks again. I was trying to do a piece like the conclave 10 on your wall.

[Mike Jackson]

Felix,
I hope I don't sound too preachy or too testy in my responses to you, but they are certainly written with the best of intentions.

The Smith's Creme is an example of this. It sounds like you just got it in and you haven't "tested" it. To have a clue how you might use it on any job in the future, you need to get it out, mix it with some One-Shot at varying percentages and see how it works. Add some turps in some tests and mineral spirits in others. Try a few drops of Japan Dryer in the mixture in another test. You will find that Smith's Creme has some good, but unexpected technical limitatations...including the possibility of a week or two curing time. You wouldn't want to find that out on a tight deadline piece after you had already painted it on the project. If you don't do tests like this now, you will be on this forum someday down the line telling us you did some blends on a project and it is not drying and wondering what to do once the horses are out of the barn and down the road.

Back to your original question, you can add some tinting (transparent) pigment to about any clear, including One-Shot gold size, and hand brush your shades the old fashioned way. Screening with thin lettering paints and varnishes would be a problem, so screening might be out of the question if you don't have the right supplies. Both One-Shot size and Fibroseal set up very quickly, not giving you much stroking time with a transparent shade, so those two probably wouldn't be good choices, depending on how thick the strokes are. On the positive side, they dry quickly and that would allow you to add in the final background colors quicker. Slow size, or oil size, could be used to get better shades with less visible brush strokes, but it might take several days to cure.

Remember, these tests are usually not big projects. To test varnishes and mixtures, you really only need to make a few brush strokes on a piece of painted MDO, aluminum, and glass. You can end up with fingerprints all over them as you test each one during the drying and curing process. I don't believe anyone here can feed you this information. You absolutely have to perform these types of tests on your own for any of it to make any long term sense and for you to be able to put that information to use in upcoming projects.

(added after the first post)
Also, you will find that you need only a TINY bit of pigment in some clear to make the kind of shade or shadow you are talking about. On the glass, it might appear as though you have only about 10% coverage and 90% transparent. That percentage will vary depending on the actual effect you are trying to achieve (allowing the background color to show through the shadow) . If you were to go to 50%, you might as well have painted or screened it with solid color.

Good luck on your project!
Mike Jackson

[Larry White]

I like Mike's idea of doing the complicated 4' x 5' sign. Heck, it might come out grand and you can skip all those test pieces.

Hmmm...I do have a lot of test pieces around here though...wish they all had a label as to what they are....darn.

(Date and label your test pieces as to what you did, that'll help the learning curve.)

-LW

[Mike Jackson]

Yep, imagine trying that Hamilton Bank Note project Larry is doing on your first project! Larry is doing each of his steps with reasonable confidence each step will work because of all the tests and smaller pieces he has done prior to this project. Even now, if he considers a step or proecess he is concerned about, he will do it first on a scrap piece of glass.

Mike

[Larry White]

Correctomundo!

In fact, I will be employing some mica powders down the road and I'm not quite sure which would be the best thing to back it up with, so...test piece.

A complex piece like the Hamilton Bank Note is not so dissimiliar from a bunch of simple pieces all rolled into one. The trick is defining the correct order of execution and not messing up what you've already done. However, if you don't have the skill or confidence to execute a particular technique, practice on a smaller sample. It cannot be stated enough to gather the correct information on any process, then practice, practice, practice!

I had an idea to replicate the emsossed domes that I've seen on the borders of cigar labels, so, I created this test piece.

Because the process worked, I finished it off. If it hadn't have worked, dumpster.

I then used that process to create this sign.


If when you need to do a sample, you do a letter, sooner or later, you'll have the whole alphabet!

-LW