Call me King Midas

April 23, 2014 11:45 AM

Am making some linocut prints on cotton paper/watercolor paper - what's the best gold paint/ink to use to do this? (Would be great if it matched Dr. Martin's Copperplate Gold ink)
posted by heavyp08 to Grab Bag (3 answers total)

I wouldn't use a dip pen ink for linocut printing because it's too liquid; my experience is that it'll run off the edges of the block and smear/drip, or it won't stick and leave empty spots in your print.

I suggest the Speedball block printing inks applied with a brayer, but their metallics frankly suck, so if you want super shiny gold and you don't want to print with an adhesive and then apply gold leaf, mix up some of the Golden brand heavy body acrylics with a touch of, say, glazing medium, to get the texture right (buttery but non-texturey, with a longer open time.) Testing this stuff is what proof prints are for, right?

Look into screen-printing inks. They can be used for block/relief printing applications and it seems like you can get some great colors. I am not familiar enough to tell you what brands, though. Best experiment.
posted by blnkfrnk at 12:50 PM on April 23, 2014

And while I have not used them, the Akua intaglio printing inks by Speedball get pretty good reviews for their metallics.
posted by blnkfrnk at 12:52 PM on April 23, 2014

I've had good results with Charbonnel's Etching Ink. I have not used their gold ink before but I have used silver and some other non-metallic colors and it turned out fantastic for intaglio and poly plate litho (printed on BFK). It's an oil based ink.
posted by QueenHawkeye at 1:16 PM on April 23, 2014 [1 favorite]