Re: A few gum things- by a new gummer
I'm sorry but I have to announce this somewhere and here seems good! I woke up this morning with an image in my head -- and I mean at the moment of consciousness -- it was of a dark brown stroke with other areas, maybe like washes, on a clear sheet of something. I tried very hard to hold it in my brain, but it faded fast. (I've been doing cyanotypes and reading about watercolor and sketching . . .) I got up in an obsessed state and grabbed the first book I came to which happened to be an old copy of Wade's book. Because (and don't ask me how, this image somehow attached itself to "gum" in my brain. (I've only just started on this highway and am working (was working) with Cyanotypes. I flipped to gum, grabbed the chemicals off the shelf. Made up some g a, but didn't want to wait a day, so grabbed the bottle of Winsor Newton ga. Measured out a bit in a shot glass, and added some burnt sienna and vandyke brown wc, then mixed up the sensitizer, dumped them together and swabbed it on a piece of 140# Arches WC hot pressed paper. Ate my breakfast while it was drying. Exposed 2 test strips with the little T2115 gauge from Judy-- one at 4 min, next at 6. Then pulled out my favorite negative and exp. that for 8 mins. Got a cracking good print, but pale. Lots of definition. This afternoon I did a second version, after reading Seigel's article in PF #1, where she mentions adding more ga to the mix. I did that and added some ivory black wc to darken things a bit. I'm on cloud nine -- 2nd print ( just like the first only a bit darker) -- extra gum, extra paint, and an extra 30" of exposure. I'm sticking it up on the web, not because it's wonderful, but because I had such incredibly good luck. My thanks to Judy and Kent Wade. The only way I could get an image of it was to photograph the thing as it was hanging up to dry. Matched the color pretty well (on my monitor which is tended by Huey Pro). http://www.turboeyes.com/gum2-2542-web.jpg Thanks so much to everybody in this amazing area of photography. Clair Diana Bloomfield wrote: Oh, I would like to also add that I tried that sizing suggestion in James' book (and I saw it mentioned somewhere else, too) where you size with gum and dichromate-- I tried that twice and couldn't get it to work. Has anybody ever actually tried that, and does it work?
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