Has anyone have tried to use those real fish prints that are placed on rice paper? I have a customer that wants one laminated on his longboard. It would be a very pricy disaster if I went wrong.
i have painted directly on rice paper with acrylic paint from Daniel Smith. the colors were much better than from the inkjet printer, but the paper wrinkled so glassing was tricky. Big painted areas didn’t work too well; i didn’t even try razor blading slits, just tossed 'em. i’m guessing that fish prints would be just fine because the paint is scattered, not contiguous, so wrinkling won’t be major and resin penetration adequate. i doubt you will have to resort to the scan and re-print trick.
Make sure the fish is very dry. You can apply Surf Source w/b acrylic paint on the fish in a very thin layer. Too much paint will loose detail. Invest in several sheets of lam paper to practice. You can always wipe the fish off and try again. Let dry and you should not have any bleeding problems. Good luck.
About ten years ago, we did quite a few for a guy named Marshall Madruga who owns/owned FishStix. Some prints were up to six feet long and every one of them was a pain, with substantial wrinkling problems. I told him back then, (and propose as a suggestion to you) to squeegee clear lam resin on the surface receiving the image. Then, do a water-based acrylic print using the fish DIRECTLY onto the blank. I realize this would be a ‘high stakes’ operation since you get one chance, but then again you could practice on a fresh peeled blank or an old board or something. You can touch up areas with a brush afterwards. What do you think?
Thay sounds like a great idea. I was sure someone had tried it before. In 1994 I wanted to start a board company called FishStix and two months later there it was just inside the cover of Longboard Magazine. He must of read my mind.