Re: VanDyke on alt surfaces (and hello, again)


Richard Sullivan (richsul@earthlink.net)
Fri, 12 Mar 1999 12:00:04 -0700


Wow... Are you courageous!

My first guess is that plaster is not the medium as it is chemically
reactive and is going to cause problems. It is an alkaline surface and as
such is going to play hell with any chemically active emulsion that you put
on it.

I once saw a tip in a 19th Century photo journal that as an antidote for
nitric acid or any other acid poisoning to knock a piece of plaster out of
the wall, crush it and feed it to the victim with copious amounts of water!

If it has to be plaster then sealing it is the only way to go. Try gelatin,
polyvinyl alcohol, or any other kind of sizing.

--Dick Sullivan

At 12:39 PM 3/12/99 -0600, you wrote:
>Greeting List-folk
>I'm back, and hoping to stick around a bit longer this time (ahhh, the
>wonders of research accounts!)
>
>I am currently trying to figure out how to print and successfully fix
>VanDyke onto flat plaster surfaces. So far, brushing 2 coats of solution
>onto unsealed plaster, with my lights, prints a beautiful soft beige image.
>I set the plaster face up into the sodium thiosulphate bate for 30 seconds,
>and washed, face up, for 30 minutes. The reason I washed face up was for
>fear of scratching the resulting image before hardening. The plaster
>withstands the long washing time.
>
>However, less than 48 hours later, after setting the printed plaster to dry
>in a room with a big window, my suspicions before I started were confirmed:
>the plaster is so absorbent that the solution wasn't fully exposed, nor
>fully fixed or washed: my entire brushed surface is a lovely, even brown :
>full fog in effect.
>
>I also tried one exposure onto plaster sealed with acrylic medium (matte),
>and the brown tone was beautiful, but there was uneven exposure, escessive
>brush marks and the medium could not withstand the wash: it turned to mush
>and looks nasty.
>
>Has anyone ever attempted vandyke's onto plaster? Can anyone off a
>suggestion of what other sealants I could try (without losing the original
>texture of the plaster), and what method of application would be least
>obtrusive? Any other suggestions?
>
>Thanks and HI to all the list people who still remember me
>
>Risa S. Horowitz

505-474-0890 FAX 505-474-2857
<http://www.bostick-sullivan.com>http://www.bostick-sullivan.com
http://www.workingpictures.com



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Sat Nov 06 1999 - 10:09:03