Re: Dichromate/ size/tricolor/pigment

Peter Charles Fredrick (pete@fotem.demon.co.uk)
Mon, 22 Jul 1996 20:13:01 +0000

On Mon, 22 Jul 1996, Peter Charles Fredrick wrote:
> Yellow is a beguiling and misleading colour , the colour with the
> highest tonal value, being very light its true strength is not realised
> until it is often to late, once it goes wrong , you might as well throw
> the print away, as it it's almost impossible to correct.So if it goes down
> first as often recommended, the die is caste so to speak

Judy wrote

>But if you do the yellow last & it's no good, wouldn't that spoil all
your prior work? Is there some way you can "correct" when it's the last
that you can't with the first? Or maybe you can't tell if it's OK when it's
the first coat & waste a lot of effort on top of it?<

Hi Judy
The trick is to put the yellow down in several thin coats,and observe what
is happening to the reds and greens , if for instance the yellow is too
warm and you were using say the azo yellow, turn over to hansa yellow which
is cooler in hue,
or add just add a smidgen of cyan to cool the colour, this is treading on
eggs time , a very fine balance is required, but you can control, if the
yellow is buried under two strong colour layers such as magenta and cyan,
you don't stand a chance.

>I think it's also possible that yellow behaves differently with different
media, such as the fotempera.<

You may be right as all my colour work has been with fotempera, but I have
seen a similar method mentioned by Arnold Gasson in his " the colour
print book" published by Light Impressions, in which he recommends this
approach for Gum - Bichromate printmaking.

My best wishes pete