I had a grand idea- and it has given me some printmaking woes!

The idea was simple- combine my bad brains relief blocks with dendritic monoprints. The look is AMAZING. The process works okay. I kinda like how the texture of the thick acrylic paint breaks up the thick black of the relief print. Next time around I’ll use a thinner more liquid paint though.

The woe? It does not want to dry, at all. I’ve written a few Insta posts that my relief prints using Speedball Supergraphic Black ink looks great but take forever to dry, it turns out that my studio is just too humid. So I’ve been using the car baking method of print drying- the prints get spread out in the back of my car to dry. Depending on the weather and length of time I’ve dried them in the basement, it takes anywhere from 8 hours to 2 days for them to dry.

So the bad brains in my car now- the brains printed on paper? Dry and perfect. Brain bits on the glossy thick acrylic paint? Still slick.

I might need to break down and pick up some cobalt or other drying agent to get this ink to actually dry. I really want to avoid using those since they are wildly poisonous. No matter what I do I end up with ink on my hands. I’m also going to try a few other water soluble oil based inks. I tried the Speedball fabric ink, in brown, and even without heat it did dry.