Oh Michael, what can I say! How about, your incredible amazing technique
has to be the touchstone against which we measure all tissue making. I'm
downloading it into the carbon printout, part 3, and I'm sure it will have
a good effect on Carmen, even if she doesn't do it. If only to assure her
that mixing sumi ink is ****easy****!
Meanwhile, she phoned tonight so here's update and the new questions:
Update is that she went to Pearl, got the sumi in the green bottle *and*
Rowney jet black gouache, and after big hassle being locked out of lab in
the windstorm, made tissue from both in her kitchen, big mess, she said.
She was, on the one hand, encouraged, because it definitely looks better,
but somewhat anxious about the bubbles. She did, Luis please note, have
your book on Carbon printing, and followed your method of straining
through cloth to reduce bubbles, said it helped *a lot* but there were
still some left.
I said I thought alcohol was anti-bubble, but I had no idea how much to
add, also Rae Adams suggested Saponin, which we didn't have on hand and I
believe must be ordered through channels or somewhere specially, and
Kremer also has something they call "anti-foam" agent, which I'll see if
they will identify, in case that's OK. Kodak has discontinued its
anti-foam agent.
The other question is because now I'm totally confused about to harden or
not to harden. Sandy says (if I understand him correctly) no never, Klaus
says he uses Glyoxal... or is that just to harden the gelatine on the
receiving sheets?
Carmen had, BTW, read all the material from the list I gave her so far,
and commented that everyone disagrees.... I assured her that soon
*she* would be the expert and everyone would have to disagree with her.
She did say she thought it wasn't hard, just ***messy*** (better in her
kitchen than my classroom, which is already messy enough, say I).
Cheers,
Judy