U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: Recent work: was Re: tri-color gum at last , nr 2

Re: Recent work: was Re: tri-color gum at last , nr 2



Hi Laura, thanks for sharing these. I don't know about "gum is supposed to be painterly;" I wouldn't impose any such requirement on gum, because it can also be precise and detailed and very photographic; it can be anything anyone wants to make it. That's one of the many great things about gum, its infinite flexibility of expression. But yes, as a painter myself, I tend to prefer a painterly approach to gum over a strictly photographic aproach.

Your first one, with the green and red, is a great demonstration of how two complementary colors can combine to create a neutral grey. I once did quite a study (I forget now what project I had in mind that motivated this investigation) of how different complementary colors combined to produce different greys, from silvery to pearly to pewtery greys. Isn't it fascinating how colors combine? Well, I think so anyway.

Keep on gummin', and sharing your results,
Katharine


On Sep 25, 2008, at 6:28 AM, Laura Valentino wrote:

Here are 2 prints I did to take a break from another series that I had started and was getting frustrated with trying to get predictable results. In these 2 prints, I used some soft focus images and more or less randomly chose colors to work with just to see what would happen. Gum is supposed to be painterly, no?

http://lavatop.com/gums/index.html
http://lavatop.com/gums/index2.html