Experiments with Materiality: Equipment & Techniques II

In the last post I worked on adding a photograph to the fabric in this post I will be adding a photograph to wood.  To do this I will be using Decal.  'Decal is a shortened form of decalcomania, from the original French décalcomanie, a technique for transferring prints onto pottery.'  (lexico.com: 2020)It is a form of transfer paper that again I can put through my printer.  Being that we are in lockdown I have again scoured my house to find a suitable wood object that I would lie to transfer images onto. So here is the box that I have chosen:

16cm width x 7cm height

16cm width

16cm width

10cm x 10cm

I will now measure the dimensions of the box so that I can ensure the images can be resized to fit exactly as I would like them too - I will add the dimensions under each image.

Now for the images - a little while ago I made an army of dolls and these are the images I intend to place on the box 

So I began by printing the images onto the Decal paper - I did this at high quality plain paper as instructed.  I made these the right sizes for the box dimensions and printed at 300dpi

I then cut these out very carefully and placed them in a bowl of water - this releases the backing and makes them sticky for the box.

I then very carefully removed from the water the image - this is very thin translucent and delicate, I placed this on the wooden box in position and the with a clean paintbrush brushed turpentine onto the image so that it would adhere to the box and also become part of the wood 

Once I had completed all sides I needed to leave these to dry for at least 24 hours to ensure I do not disturb the work.

Here are some images of the completed box...

I am actually very pleased about how these images came out on the box  - they really embed into the wood and I am glad I chose to use coloured images here as the colour of the head works very well on the box.  With this in mind I think this will be the process I will use in my final project for this term.  

References

Lexico.com (2020) Definition: Decal [Online] Available from: https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/decal (Accessed 28/07/20)