I’ve wanted to have a go at rust printing for ages – I love the colour of rust, especially the sort you get on iron by the sea, which seems to have the best rich bright orange colour.
A big element of my work involves combining natural processes with printmaking, it is fun to play with random and accidental effects and then work on understanding the process so you can influence it. I don’t want complete control it but like the idea of working with nature to create prints that are a synthesis of the artists’ vision and nature’s processes.
Rust printing is a natural process that is affected by different factors, some of which are beyond your control. You may think you are repeating the same procedure twice and get different results each time; working out what just happened is part of the fun of discovery.
After putting some of my experiments on social media I had requests to get it on the blog so here it is……
My aim was to get the strongest boldest colours using the simplest process. I have tried a variety of methods and stripped out any stages that didn’t seem to affect the end result to arrive at these instructions. I am sure once you start experimenting you will personalise this basic method and add your own rusty habits…
I tend to dive in and just do stuff, then look at the instructions afterwards to work out what went wrong. My first haphazard attempts were surprisingly encouraging and gave me lots of ideas for more things to try. I hope this post will do the same for you….
If you want a quick go at rust printing try this method
Things you will need for rust printing
Some vinegar – any sort will do so check the back of the cupboard before going to buy any.
Paper that has wet strength – i.e. won’t collapse when it is soaked in water.
A tray to soak paper in and wash the prints after
A flat piece of metal that will rust. (Steel or iron)
A sheet of plastic or plastic bag
A board and something heavy to weigh it down.
Preparing the acidic solution
Mix a bit of vinegar with water in a tray big enough to soak your paper. For these experiments the quantities don’t matter too much; the more acidic the solution the faster it rusts. I think I put about 25% vinegar to water.
Preparing the metal
You need ferrous metal, (containing iron) to get rust; check it with a magnet, if the metal sticks to it, its iron. If it is already rusty that is an encouraging sign that you will get some good prints from it.
I used mild steel bought from an engineering firm. (Try asking for offcuts, they often have small bits they will give you) I had planned to use these for etching plates but never got round to it. Once you start looking for rusty steel you will surely find some lying around; old baking tins, catering tins, fridge doors….
If you are using new sheet steel wipe it well to remove any oil or grease, if you are being very thorough you can use meths or other degreasing agents.
Make a rust sandwich
First soak your paper in the water and vinegar solution
Then lay the wet paper on the steel sheet.
Add a second sheet of paper; the rust patterns can soak through more than one sheet, giving you a paler print on the second piece. If you have more steel keep layering flat pieces of metal with the vinegar soaked paper.
Keep it soggy
Wrap your steel/paper sandwich loosely in plastic to keep it damp. The rust reaction needs to be wet to work properly. Also if it dries out the paper may stick to the plate, which is very annoying as it rips. (Actually I quite like the way this one has torn.)
Press the wet sandwich
The reaction works best if the damp paper is in close contact with the metal. Cover the pile of metal and paper with a board and put a weight on top
Let the rust breathe
Keep it exposed to air – do not wrap it so tightly and press so hard that air can’t reach it. I am speaking from experience here – some of my wetted paper was wrapped in plastic and clamped hard in a nipping press against a very rusty sheet; nothing happened. It took a while to work out that in my enthusiasm to press it really hard I had made it air tight and thus prevented it rusting.
Let it rust
Leave it for anything from a couple of hours to a few days for the rust to develop. This is a nice slow process, but take care not to forget your prints!
Un-pack your new rust prints
This is like Christmas for printmakers. Prise a corner up and peek into the bundle to see what has happened – if the colour looks strong enough for you, unpack the papers.
A magic transformation has taken place and you should have several interesting rust prints with nature’s designs in shades of orange.
Rinse your prints in clean water to remove the vinegar before drying them.
Keep track of your experiments
If you are like me your first experiments will have got you hooked and raised more questions than answers.
I strongly suggest you document your experiments with photos and notes as you go along because if you get a good result it can be difficult to remember just what you did.
Here are some of my notes and observations
Clean steel surface
The metal does not have to be rusty – prints taken from clean steel also rusted and the steel was not rusty afterwards. Could be magic I think.
Old rusty steel
You can keep using the same plates over and over without cleaning the rust off – it just keeps going. You can however clean it off with a wire brush to reveal bare metal again.
Masking with grease
Deliberately adding grease to the plate protects the metal and prevents areas rusting. These thumb prints on the plate on the left were done with Vaseline, and show as white on the print.
Masking with vinyl
Masking the plate also prevents rust – here is an example with sticky back plastic (black triangles) which remain light on the print.
Where next?
This post is called ‘get started with rust printing’ and it really is just a start. I will be doing more posts exploring different things you can do with rust.
If you have any suggestions for things to try, things that didn’t work, or other observations about printing with rust I’d love to hear from you.
20 thoughts on “Rust printing on paper; first steps”
Can’t wait to try this. Can you please give specific examples of the type of paper that would work for this – and withstand being soaked in water without falling apart?
Hi, I am glad you are inspired to try! I just used cartridge paper. I think the best thing is to try a little piece in water, most paper should actually be ok, eg computer printer paper, but if you want to use thin tissue that could be a problem – it just falls apart after being in the water so is hard to handle.
This looks fun! When you say “press the wet sandwich”, does that mean run it through a press, or just use the gravity/pressure of a weight on top?
You only need gravity for this, the idea is to make sure the paper is in close contact with the rusty surface. Its a good idea to put a few weights on it but I did put one lot in the bookbinding press, this worked, but if you exclude air by over enthusiastic pressing the rust doesn’t develop…
Hi Emily,
Do you know if these rust prints are archival? Will the paper deteriorate over time, or does the rust effect just sit on the surface?
Rust stains are notoriously hard to remove from paper so the actual image is very unlikely to fade, however rust can tend to make paper brittle over time. The prints will vary, some prints are quite lightly rusted while some have big encrustations if they have been left to develop over a longer time, and this will have more effect on the paper.
The other thing that will affect the prints longevity is how well you rinse it – the paper will contain acid from the vinegar and possibly salt if you used that too, so needs a thorough rinsing. The acid may shorten the life of the paper and salt will attract water so could make it damp, neither of these are good news for paper! However thorough rinsing should reduce the affect of these.
I have a big rust print by Jo Walton which has been up on the wall, unframed for over 5 years with no apparent change to its quality.
Sorry this is a slightly vague answer, if anybody has more specific ways of gauging archival aspects of rust prints please let us know!
Hi if I already have old rusted metal do I still need the vinegar or do I just keep the paper damp with the plastic?
Thanks
Julia
The vinegar provides an acidic environment which encourages the rust, you can also use salt to do this – imagine how ferrous metal rusts much more by the sea in the salty air/water. You may get good results without vinegar but it speeds it up and can intensify the colours.
I found that when the metal has become very rusted it doesn’t always transfer well to the paper. Rubbing it with a wire brush till you are back to clean metal helped the rust to re-form and made better marks on the paper.
As it is an organic process there are quite a few different things going on, so the best advice is give it a go and vary your approach till you get a result that you like!
Hi
I have been inspired with your rust-printing! So I’ve played around with it pretty much now.
I tested after the rustprint had dried, to print another etched plate inked with ordinary Charbonnel ink which worked VERY nice.
Don’t Know if you’ve done that….
So U
Just wanted to update on that.
Best Regards
Gunnar
In southern Sweden.
That sounds interesting – do you mean you printed an etching onto of the rust print?
or did you ink up the rusty plate and print it??
either way it would be great to see a picture of your print
Hi
I printed already etched copperplates as well as solarplates on the rustprints. The I let them dry as usual under pressure for a week.
Can send you photos. But I can’t add them here on the blog.
Gunnar
Hi Gunnar – I’d love to see some images of your rust prints. I am hoping to update the website soon so people will be able to share images but in the meantime you can always email me pics; emily@thecuriousprintmaker.co.uk.
Hi, this a wonderful option! I’ve been experimenting with it a lot. Combining rusting with lino etching and ink. I used watercolour masking fluid to stop the rust from spreading over the edges of the print. It works well. What other options are there for this purpose? The fluid is expensive…
If l use vaseline, won’t it stain the paper?
l tried frisket as a mask, in order to stop the rust from spreading over the edges of the print, but it doesn’t work. Then l tried petroleum gel (Vaseline). It works well. In order to get it off the paper I used mineral spirit .
Thanks Tamara – vaseline is definitely a good thing to have in your store cupboard. When you say ‘mineral spirit’ do you mean white spirit as used for cleaning brushes? or is it methylated spirits?
white spirit
I learned that after you remove the paper (or fabric) from the rusty metal, you neutralize or stabilize by doaking it in a warm salt bath for 20min. Does that sound right to you? I know you said that salt attracts moisture.
Actually I just rinsed the paper/fabric in clean water – it has already been soaking in a vinegar and salt solution so I didn’t add any extra salt to the rinsing water. I found the images were permanent, but would be interested to know if other people have any issues with stabilising images?
I’ve been creating rust papers for collage and embedding in encaustic, just wrapping the paper over metal objects and wetting them with a solution of :
2 cups Hydrogen Peroxide
4 Tablespoons 5% white vinegar
1 tsp salt
Seems to work well, but I was wondering how lightfast/archival they’d be so thanks for his resource. I used to work in printmaking so your method is inspiring me to try masking/printmaking with it as well.
It sounds interesting to combine encaustic with rust, thank you for sharing your recipe. Based on how difficult it is to remove rust stains from fabric/paper I assume the rust part of the image will be pretty permanent. People have queried the archival nature of it due to possible acidity (vinegar), but if the work is thoroughly rinsed it should be possible to remove this, and it may not be an issue with encaustic.