Re: Van Dyke question(s)
I agree with David in terms of color that results from toning with
gold, palladium, and platinum. I trust noble metal toning much more
than selenium (which works in terms of color change, but only at
weak dilutions and short times that raise questions about archival
stability), and sulfide, which may work but I have not found a way to
make it work without loss of Dmax.
On the whole I prefer the rich black/brown of palladium, but the
purle/brown of gold toning is also attractive.
Sandy
At 9:44 PM -0500 1/16/08, david drake wrote:
Hi Judy,
I have a some experience with toning Vandykes; they will all change
the colour. As far as I know, there is no way around this.
Platinum - rich black dmax with black/brown mid-tones.
Palladium - black/brown dmax with subtle olive green cast mid-tones.
Clerc's Thiourea Gold toner (1/2 the amount of Gold Chloride
solution) - still is purple/brown but the purple isn't as strong
with only half the amount of gold chloride with a rich black dmax.
All these colours are from printing on Stonehenge and Platine. I
have found that Platine has better dmax but has the bad habit of
retaining the sensitizer, giving very pale yellowish high-lights
(this has been especially bad with Gold Thiourea toner.
I have come to prefer the Platinum & Gold toners. The Gold toner
looks fantastic on a warmer paper.
cheers
david
On 14-Jan-08, at 11:52 PM, Judy Seigel wrote:
A friend has a commission for a series of prints in Van Dyke Brown,
which she loves... but my experience with a beautiful VDB given to
me by someone else and left out in normal living-room light
(fluorescent, however) is that it faded noticeably -- in about 10
years. Though meanwhile I have a VDB on glass by Galina that's been
hanging in a window for several years and shows no change at all...
I figure, however, that it must have been toned.
So I told her that:
1. The prints wouldn't be archival unless they were toned, and,
2. Gold toning wouldn't seriously change the color (which was much
of the appeal).
But then I thought, it's at least 10 years -- maybe more -- since I
gold toned a VDB. Do I *really* remember the color? So I said,
I'll ask The List... "they'll know."
I'm also going to give her Liam's wonderful article about "Make
your own gold chloride" from P-F, though she said she doesn't have
any gold teeth or old wedding rings tucked away. (Possibly a gold
coin or two, tho my guess would be that the coin is worth more than
the equivalent amount of gold dust would cost.)
Anyway, comments on toning VDB for archivality, et al., would be
much appreciated... (I also toned VDB with palladium toner, which
gave a rich deep black, but this quest is for the beautiful VDB
brown. Would selenium work? Can you still get selenium?)
TIA,
Judy
david drake photography
www.daviddrakephotography.com
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