Re: daniel smith gum
Katharine...thanks, and btw...if I buy some DS powdered gum, how should I
mix it?
p
----- Original Message -----
From: "Katharine Thayer" <kthayer@pacifier.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 12:01 PM
Subject: Re: daniel smith gum
I looked up that previous discussion about how some gum arabic is not
acacia senegal but acacia seyal. It was a link to a Kremer page supplied
by Alberto Novo in January of this year that alerted me to the difference
between acacia senegal and acacia seyal, the description of the
brittleness of the dried acacia seyal making me wonder if perhaps the
Daniel Smith premium gum may be at least partly acacia seyal.. I can't
seem to find my way back to the exact Kremer page to link it directly, but
here's a post where Alberto copied the relevant paragraph from the page:
http://www.usask.ca/lists/alt-photo-process-l/200901/msg00118.html
The fact that the Kremer price list at that time identified at least one
of their gum arabics as a mixture of acacia senegal and acacia seyal,
made me wonder even more whether Daniel Smith may also mix these two
types of acacia, but was unable to get an answer to my question from
Daniel Smith. Now the Kremer price list specifies that their powdered
gum arabic is either acacia senegal OR acacia seyal, no way of knowing
which one you're going to get.
The Daniel Smith premium gum does print very nicely, don't get me wrong,
that's why I've kept with it in spite of my issues with some of its
qualities, but it does have these odd qualities. My suspicion that it
may be at least partly if not wholly acacia seyal instead of acacia
senegal is just a speculation on my part, since I couldn't get an answer
from Daniel Smith, but it's definitely not the same material as the other
gums I've used. And I don't really know whether the powdered gum will
turn out to have the same qualities as the liquid premium gum, but I'm
hoping it won't. It would be helpful if they were more fothcoming about
what gum(s) they are marketing under the product name "gum arabic."
Katharine
On Sep 27, 2009, at 9:45 PM, Katharine Thayer wrote:
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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