Bleach Discharging Art Technique

by Katie Rivard
(New Brighton Minnesota USA)

Mixed Media Art Questions for Milliande

Hello,

My name is Katie and I live in Minnesota USA in a Minneapolis suburb.
I am new to mixed media but have been a fiber artist for many years. I have used bleach to discharge dye from fabric. It is important to completely remove the bleach from the fabric after using it to discharge the dyes. Do you leave the bleach in/on the paper? If you remove or stop the chemical reaction of the bleach how do you do it?
I also am assuming that you use the bleach full strength. Is that right?
Thank you so much for this community! I have just joined and appreciate it greatly!
Katie

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Mixed Media Art Questions answered by Milliande

Hi ..I am glad you are settling in and enjoying our art community :-)

To your Question about Bleach on paper .... I mainly use bleach on paper in my art journaling ... there is a special type of ink called " Quink Ink" that can be used to first either cover the entire art journal page or parts of it with ink .. then use bleach to discharge the ink back of the paper to reveal the bleached out design underneath

There are varying techniques for applying the bleach ... either neat on an acrylic brush ( bleach can easily destroy natural brushes so using an inexpensive acrylic brush or a plastic tool of sorts to create designs work best )

With these bleach applications-- undiluted bleach works best for very bold designs that want to be discharged ...

I also use a small spritzer bottle or water diffuser .. the Ranger Mini Mister bottles work well .. to fill with a diluted Water/bleach mixture ...this will give a finely dotted mist discharge on the paper

Certain " cheap brand" colored papers and colored card work well being discharged by bleach ... the dye in the cheaper brands is often not fade resistant or archival ..thus suitable for the bleach discharge technique

~ More expensive brand papers or archival scrapbook papers will not work with the bleach discharge technique as they dye used to color the paper and card is of higher quality and designed to be archival and fade resistant ..


~ As for how to stop the bleach process-- I don't ..I let it sit until it has come to a rest as it where and the chemical reaction is finished... Quink ink comes in various colors, black, blue black , brown and a reddish color...all take slightly longer times to discharge ....

~ I would not use this process for any mixed media artworks that are meant to be archival and remain unchanged... however I would love to hear if other artists have any ideas re stopping the bleach process on paper ...and whether anyone has experience with the archivalness in mixed media applications

hope this helps ...looking forward to other comments

...milliande
Mixed Media Artist