[alt-photo] van dyke brown and strathmore

[Christina Anderson]

Dear All,
So yesterday I taught VDB to my students and FINALLY experienced the delaminating of Strathmore that people have mentioned on the list every now and then, probably years ago.
I had a bunch of different papers that I had bought through Freestyle and through a common art store, the pads of papers that you typically see at a Michaels or whatnot.
We used all these different papers with both cyanotype (last week) and now VDB. 
The Strathmore series is GORGEOUS for both processes, but with the VDB there were little bubbles where the paper had not torn but had sort of lifted up from below. Very odd looking. At first I thought the student had been too rough with the paper with the tongs but apparently not. I think if she's quite careful it will work but I've just never seen that before until yesterday.
I still absolutely love that cheap Canson U Sketch called Crob Art, and the Canson Montval is beautiful as well. 
Another couple things: I mixed the solution with warm water this time--no white precipitate.
And I used it right away and it was fine, no waiting to ripen. I kind of had to because I was going to do kallitype and the shipment of chems didn't come in time, so I had to switch the day of lab and mix up VDB on the fly. With my quick n easy teaspoon measure recipe.
Fun times, fun times...last year this time I was struggling with inappropriate paper choices and argyrotype so to see that nice rich brown pop up in the development is such a joy.
One more thing, I left a print in the fix for several hours to see if it would bleach out completely and although it does bleach to an unacceptable level, the image was still there. It was a good visual for the students.
How much fun to be done writing and back to creating...
Chris

Christina Z. Anderson
christinaZanderson.com