Further adventures w/Rising & Zia...


Roger Hein (rogein@interlog.com)
Thu, 15 Apr 1999 20:51:35 -0400


Encouraged by Carl's recent enthusiastic post on Ziatype printing using
Rising Artist Drawing Bristol, I deceided to hop down to a local art supply
store and give it a try. While I was there I also picked up some other
papers I've not tried.

Using the 'standard' Zia 'black' LiPd mix (@ 20C, 50% RH):

-Rising Bristol gave me a very warm toned print. It coated incredibly easy
and showed only very slight corner 'separation' during the 'wet' cycles. I
didn't find the tone to be as 'even' as Crane's Platinotype (ever so slight
graining?)

-Arches Platine coated easy (w/o Tween) and had the 'smoothest' even tone
of anything I've tried so far. The print was about the same (neutral)
colour as the Crane's.

-Mayfair SW was a big problem. It coated poorly and trying a high amount
of Tween helped but it still showed lots of 'blotches' in the emulsion
(like Socorro but much worse). I tried prehumidifying before coating but
it didn't seem to make any difference. One thing I noticed, w/o Tween the
print borderd on 'blue-black' in colour.

-Mirage 'plate' is a 100% cotton rag, 2-ply 'archival' bristol made by
Rising. This one turned out to be a pleasant suprise. Like Rising's
Drawing Bristol it coats extremely easy, has the same smoothness tone, but
is more resilient to the 'wet' cycle (showed no corner separation) and it
offers a cooler print colour - somewhere inbetween their Drawing Bristol
and Crane's Platinotype. Adding Tween seems to cool down the tone w/o
affecting the 'eveness'. Cost (locally) is a little over twice that of
their Drawing Bristol. Anyways, definitely worth a try.

Like Carl, I apologize if this has be 'beaten' to death, but hope some will
find it useful.

Cheers,
Roger...
Come Visit My Web Site!
http://www.interlog.com/~rogein



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu Oct 28 1999 - 21:39:31