U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | RE: A few gum things- by a new gummer

RE: A few gum things- by a new gummer



Congratulations Clair. Gum is so addictive!

John.

-----Original Message-----
From: cadunn [mailto:cadunn@vt2000.com] 
Sent: 07 April 2008 19:14
To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
Subject: 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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