Re: humidity and gum coating
Thanks Katharine. This is an area I want to pursue, I appreciate your
comments.
John.
www.johnbrewerphotography.com
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. Anaïs Nin.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Katharine Thayer" <kthayer@pacifier.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2006 8:07 PM
Subject: Re: humidity and gum coating
On Sep 4, 2006, at 11:16 AM, John Brewer wrote:
For one thing, it seems to me that dampening the paper would be a
perfect way to prepare for selective coloring, where you only want to
color part of the picture, as in when people make a color picture from
a black and white negative. I haven't tried this yet but might today.
Katharine, could you explain why this would be better than, say, masking
an area with card when wanting to selectively colour?
Sorry, I haven't got back to trying this, but I'll answer the question
anyway, since I'm not sure when I will get back to it.
This is probably one of those "six dozen of one, half a dozen dozen of
the other" kind of things, if you use a mask while coating. I was
thinking that with the pre-wet paper, the coating would sink in a bit
rather than sitting up on the surface and so would be easier to contain
within a prescribed area. But when I said that, I was thinking of
coating without a mask. I've found that when I want to coat an area for
selective coloring (without a mask, and with dry paper) if I whisk the
coating with a dry brush, as one ordinarily would, then I run the risk of
carrying the coating outside the area I want to coat, but you're right; a
mask would solve that to some extent. The potential problem I see with
that is that when you're setting the coating with a dry brush, you could
risk picking up wet coating off the acetate of the mask and spoiling the
drying coating with the wetter stuff. What I've done in the past (not
that I have a great deal of experience with selective coating; I've only
done this a few times) when I want to selectively color a small area, is
use a drier brush to coat with (wick some of the liquid off the brush
onto a paper towel before coating) so that the coating is less liquid and
stays put. Like I say, it's one of those things you can approach
several different ways.
Katharine
----- Original Message ----- From: "Katharine Thayer"
<kthayer@pacifier.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca>
Sent: Monday, September 04, 2006 6:17 PM
Subject: Re: humidity and gum coating
On Sep 3, 2006, at 8:34 AM, Venkatram Iyer wrote:
Dunking rather than soaking the paper, then hanging to drip, blotting
it, followed by coating may be a way to prevent the inner fibers from
getting wet.
I'm still playing with this wet-coating thing; I've gotten
fascinated with it. even though the humidity is back to its usual 90+
% and I'm not having any more trouble coating as I was the other day
when it dropped to 17%.
For one thing, it seems to me that dampening the paper would be a
perfect way to prepare for selective coloring, where you only want to
color part of the picture, as in when people make a color picture from
a black and white negative. I haven't tried this yet but might today.
Yesterday I got to thinking that if this works, why couldn't you print
the next layer of a multiple print as soon as the gum layer is dried,
even though the paper is wet through---would save a lot of time
waiting for paper to dry between layers. So I tried this, but had too
many variables floating around to draw a conclusion even for this one
print. For one thing, I used lukewarm water for the soaking, because
the instructions someone sent me called for that, but I think I won't
do that again, but just use the same cold water I use for development.
And the brush had a lot of water in it because it had just been washed
out, and for whatever reason it hadn't been squeezed out damp-dry as I
usually do after washing it (maybe the phone range or something). So
the coating went on really watery and sloshy. I'll do it again using
cold water for the soak and making sure there's no extra water in the
brush. But I also think the paper should be dried slightly; this
paper was so limp when it was coated that when I picked it up, it hung
off both sides of my hand like a dishrag. So I think Rajul is probably
right that less soaking is probably better than more.
At any rate, following that protocol, I got a little bit of staining,
but not very noticeable, and I'll try it again with modifications to
see if I still get stain. Like I say, the stain is hardly noticeable
and I'm thinking I may go ahead and frame this print (although I might
mat over the smudges against the far right margin of the print)
because I like how it captures the atmosphere of the day. I added
this print to the wet-coating page, for whatever it's worth:
http://www.pacifier.com/~kthayer/html/wetcoat.html
This is also a good demonstration of how one can make a fairly
realistic color print with two complementary color layers, if the
scene is essentially a two-color scene (two colors plus grey). I
brought the idea with me from painting, where I've made a lot of
paintings using only burnt umber and blue.
I have a feeling I won't be done with this until I try printing a
tricolor gum with all the layers printed on wet paper.
Katharine
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