Re: spots and fish eyes

Chris,

Since you don't have any other responce let me give it 2 cents worth. My
understanding in having the same thing happen in watercolor painting has
been that an area or spot on the surface of the paper is rejecting of the
water-based solution. In water color this is often a case of an oily finger
print or other polution of the paper surface. In gum printing I take it to
be related. It could be contamination from my hand or a spot of sizing that
is too "slick" to hold the water. In painting I learned to use a little
wetting agent in my water to stop this problem if it appeared. Sometimes
just scrubbing the area with the brush would overcome the problem. With
acrylic sized gum paper I use gentle abration with "Scotch-Brite" to roughen
the sized surface.

What do others do?

Jack

> From: "Christina Z. Anderson" <zphoto@montana.net>
> Reply-To: alt-photo-process-l@skyway.usask.ca
> Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 07:53:29 -0500
> To: Alt List <alt-photo-process-l@skyway.usask.ca>
> Subject: spots and fish eyes
>
> Good morning all!
> I was wondering what the group consensus is on the cause of fish eyes
> in gum printing? Is it because the gum/pigment mix is too "limpid" as one
> old author said (too watery)? Or is there another cause? This same author
> talked about gum, when being mixed with the dichromate, goes into little
> microscopic globules that causes this. Or spotty sizing?
> In the same vein, I have a most unusual print I did this week that I
> would love Ed Buffaloe to show on his site (Ed?); it is really funny. It
> fits with my project, which is using negs from my dad's collection from the
> late 20's to the late 40's, digitizing the odd shaped negs, and printing
> them out so they look like when people were trying to make black and white
> color (can you tell I am not very eloquent this morning...) Anyway, there
> are all these black spots all over one side, and a line down thru the middle
> that looks like water damage. I am very sure it is uneven sizing of the
> Fabriano paper--probably due to operator error in that with my shrinking of
> the paper I put one too many pieces of paper in my bathtub and did not
> agitate enough, or perhaps it could be manufacturer error. Anyone have a
> similar problem?
> Chris
>
Received on Mon Dec 8 13:32:08 2003