Re: Dichromate dilution and speed

Gary,
I'm afraid you've missed the point of that picture. That's not an
example of a one-coat gum at all, far from it. I would never attempt to
make a one-coat gum from a negative with that long of a tonal scale, for
one thing. As the caption said, the illustration was intended to show
how I like to print the first coat of an image whose scale is longer
than gum can print. I like to choose a pigment concentration that allows
me to print the full number of steps that the gum can print, and I want
to cover the top end of the scale more than the bottom end on the first
coat. A heavier pigment would give me the shadows but not the
highlights. I want detail in all areas of the print on the first
printing, with the highlights well filled in and the shadows open. This
of necessity makes a pretty flat print. This way of printing is new for
me in the last couple of years, as I've become more and more interested
in very subtle tonal gradations and a higher-key image. In fact, I
probably went too far that way; I seem to be swinging back now from a
point where my three-coat gums looked just barely breathed onto the
paper; there was hardly anything there. I used such thin coatings that I
could print all day with 5 mls of solution.

The point I'm trying to make is that how you print has everything to do
with what you want
to accomplish, what you want your print to look like. If your goal is a
higher-contrast print, with less subtle gradation in the higher tones,
then you would never want to start this way. The thing about gum is
that, as a general rule, in any one printing you can have subtety or you
can have drama, but you can't have both. These days I'm more inclined to
pick subtlety most of the time, but I'm unusual in that respect I
think.

How many more coats? I would probably just do one more, to deepen the
shadows a bit, but that's just me. I LIKE pictures that don't shout at
you.

Hope this is helpful,
Katharine

Gary Nored wrote:
>
> On 30 Nov 2003, at 16:57, Katharine Thayer wrote:
>
> > Some pictures to supplement my post. As always, what you see will be
> > an approximation of the originals, but it's the best approximation I
> > can manage.
>
> Thank you so much for doing this! I'm glad I caught it while it was
> up -- it seems to have disappeared, and only the tri-color page is
> accessible now.
>
> The thing I found most amazing, however, had nothing to do with
> the experiment itself, but rather the picture you posted of a
> "typical" one-coat gum print (full-tone blue pigeon picture). I've been
> thinking that my results were terrible, but they look surprisingly
> similar to yours. That can only mean that my one-coat attempts
> have been ok. I thought they were terrible because in my first
> attempt at gum (using someone else's gum, of unknown origin)
> resulted in a much more full-range image than my current efforts
> using the Varn gum.
>
> Which leads me to wonder ... if you were printing this picture for
> greater contrast and tonal range, would you print 1 additional coat?
> Two? More?
>
> Regards,
> Gary Nored
> http://home.centurytel.net/Gary_Nored/
Received on Mon Dec 1 19:22:58 2003