Newbie Gum fun!
Hi all, I've just had my go with coating a pad of Arches Smooth paper 300gsm 100%cotton, I sized one piece in hot water first(no gelatin), but as I did this, I started getting speckled dots around a mm, which were lighter than the paper, they covered 3/4 of the paper? I tried another piece of paper with a hot gelatin solution(no hot water sizing at all) and put it in the tray, where I got the same result of speckled mm dots?! I've tried using a Rough Fabriano Artistico paper with both the hot water and gelatin sizing, no problems at all there. Anyhow I hung the Arches to dry last night, I havent as yet checked the paper this morning. Perhaps there is an issue with the Arches paper and I should take it back to the seller? I have bought the powder form of Gum Arabic, its a straw yellow. I tried two methods, to make a 35% solution in 100ml (35g of gum). The first method was to use a coffee filter and put 35g of that in there and poured distilled water to make 100ml out of it. There was one big gooey mess in the filter. Which I threw away once I got my 100ml. The other method was to put the gum 35g in 100ml of water, when I did this I thought there was no way the gooey mess will actually dissapear, but as an hour or so progressed it started slowly disappearing! :) I'll check on it tonight, and might pass that 100ml through a coffee filter to see if any sediment is caught and throw that away. What methods do you use to make a solution of gum arabic from powder? Many thanks Jacek Gonsalves
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