Re: daniel smith gum
Katharine...
Thanks for this post!
Much appreciated...
Paul
----- Original Message -----
From: "Katharine Thayer" <kthayer@pacifier.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca>
Sent: Sunday, September 27, 2009 9:45 PM
Subject: Re: daniel smith gum
Paul, like all answers in gum, "it depends"....
I don't care for the standard (dark) gum, mostly because I mix
pigment/gum mixes by eye and I need the color and darkness of the gum
not to obscure the color of the mixture. I also once believed
someone's assertion that the dark color of the darker gums sullies
the brightness of the colors in the finished print, but when I
tested that assertiont, it turned out not to be so. But I did find
that the darker gums,including the DS standard gum, tended to print
with fewer steps (more contrasty) than the lighter gums.
I've been using the Daniel Smith premium gum exclusively for three-
four years now, and I have a couple of issues with it. The pigment/
gum mixtures I make with it seem to quickly become more viscous and
before long, dry up altogether. This never happened with the old
Formulary gum; I have mixtures of little-used colors made with it
that I've had mixed for years and years, that are just as fresh as
the day I mixed them. Generally my mixes made with this Daniel Smith
premium gum are unusable within 6 months or so. This is a problem.
The gum also has a different quality than what I consider quality
gum arabic, a brittleness that I saw when I brushed out unpigmented
gum on a piece of paper and let it dry. Normal gum arabic,
brushedout in a thin coat, dries smooth with a slight gloss; the DS
premium gum is brittle when dry, and cracks or flakes (shatters,
actually, is a better word to describe what it looks like) into shiny
bits like tiny pieces of cellophane that no longer adhere to the
paper. I've never seen this happen with the pigment mixed in, only
with the plain gum. I don't know what this means, but a description
I read somewhere of a slightly different type of gum, (not acacia
senegal but a different variety) including that it's more brittle
than acacia senegal, for example, sounded so much like the behavior
of this gum that I began to suspect that this gum may be at least a
mixture of acacia senegal and this other type of gum. I don't
remember the particulars, like what variety of acacia this other gum
is from, but I do remember that I wrote a post or two about it at
the time, which should be found somewhere in the archives. I called
Daniel Smith and asked, but no one could (or would) tell me
anything. They make their own watercolor paint, and one might
suppose that the gum arabic that they sell would be the same as the
gum arabic that they use in their watercolor paint, and you would
think that the people who make the paint would be able to answer that
question, what variety of acacia their gum arabic comes from, but
maybe they consider it a trade secret or something. At any rate,
I've recently mixed up a batch of the gum they sell as powder, and
while I haven't actually printed with it yet, just mixing it and
working with it, feeling its character, it *feels* more like "gum" to
me. We'll see. I'm really quite tired of having to toss out dried up
cannisters of mixed gum/igment; it's a huge waste of pigment.
As to the Formulary, I don't know what they're selling now. I used
to love their gum but when they started selling something resembling
crankcase oil for their premium gum, I bailed out and haven't bought
gum from them since. But since gum, like wine, changes from season
to season, an observation made some time back is essentially useless
now.
Katharine
On Sep 25, 2009, at 3:36 PM, Paul Viapiano wrote:
Daniel Smith gum...standard or premium light?
Is there a big difference between the two and is it much different
than the Formulary gum?
Just curious...
Paul
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