Dichromate Gum Brushing Printing AirDrying
Hi all, Reading the recent posts, i'm no way feeling mocked or ridiculed from whomever for what i'm doing, i'm here to learn and have fun :) I know unharden gelatin is problematic, though i'll move on with what I have.. Though I finally sourced a company who sells formaldehyde, just waiting to hear from them if its the correct percentage of 37-40%? Lets get one with it...possibly a silly question but let me ask it anyway! :) I tried another session of Gum printing last night, when I poured the sensitiser, what I found was in my potassium dichromate bottle were crystals formed at the bottom? Now if I used the solution as it is, with the crystals at the bottom, would the sensitivity of the solution be the same, than if I reheated them up and the crystals dissolved? Just wondering if this is so, because in my prior session I didnt look to see if there were any crystals. One thing I did notice is when I did reheat them up again, by putting the bottle in a hot water bath, the solution in the bottle gives off fumes. Here I am thinking that once the dry dichromate is in the water, it doesnt give out any fumes...oh so wrong am I. :| Also when air drying just after coating and after development does anyone air dry it outside or is it safe to dry it inside? Is gum also hazardous when it's a dry powder? Anyhow with my printing from last night I ended up getting pigment stain(lamp black tube paint), with preshrunk , unharden gelatin sizing (Arches and Fabriano Aquarelle), I figured out how much pigment I used by weighing it(0.10g), finally. I know I'm a beginner and should be using other colours, but I want to go through the motions of experiencing my own mistakes and learning... Before you say I havent got unharden gelatin and thats why I got pigment stain, the Fabriano paper I used in my prior session with very little lamp black didnt stain. Here's the result: http://www.jagnight.com/Fabriano812.jpg Look at the highlights. Also looking at the scan of the Arches and the print I feel the scan looks alot worse as it shows stain? The print itself seems fine in the highlights :| The brushing part i'm still unsure about, I use around 10ml of solution, coat that with a brush, start off with vertical strokes, then horizontal ones. This time I coated as much solution on it as I could. Then use another brush, a hake one, just the tips of it to smoothen it. I'll put up pics of the ccoated paper and what it looks like air dryed for 15mins. The developed prints seem unpatchy as the previous ones did, though it was fully pigment stained. I know now what the quantity is for pigment stain and will keep trying to reduce pigment till I get no stain. Cheers Jacek |
