Re: More to see in NYC (Hint: Sookang Kim)
On Jan 15, 2009, at 4:39 AM, Keith Gerling wrote: I'm not being skeptical here, as I certainly trust your impressions, but why the need for 5 coats of one color? What do you think physically is different about a print when the pigment is added in small doses? Not that it isn't intriguing... Keith, I spent some time in the early 00s exploring the problem of printing very delicate high-key images using very little pigment. I can't claim to have done anything spectacular like Sookang Kim's work, but what I learned in this exploration was that it was necessary to print several layers of the very pale coatings in order to build up definition, tone and contrast. You can do a one-coat of a more pigmented mix and get definition and contrast in one coat, but if you print just one layer of a very diluted mix you just get something very wimpy, almost invisible. I printed this way exclusively for about four years (I call it my "minimalist" period) and I used anywhere from 3-8 layers of gum for each print. A couple of examples: http://www.pacifier.com/~kthayer/html/surf.html http://www.pacifier.com/~kthayer/html/eggs.html Using several layers of a very lightly pigmented mix gives you a very different effect than using one coat of a more pigmented mix, for reasons I explain here, under the heading "smoothness of tonal gradation and pigment concentration." http://www.pacifier.com/~kthayer/html/tonality.html Katharine
|