From: The Painted Horse (paintedhorse@in-tch.com)
Date: 07/17/03-10:57:32 AM Z
Kate and Katharine,
Thank you for all the information. It has definitely given me something
to think about. It is frustrating to keep working in a medium in which
failure can abound in so many ways. And as I said, I'm just getting
started. So far after 15 printing attempts I'm not happy with any of them.
After giving it much thought I have a possible solution to my current
problem, but I should probably clarify what type of gum printing I am
currently doing. I am attempting, but not yet succeeding in, the gumoil
method. Which is similar to traditional gum printing except it uses an
interpositive instead of a negative and it uses oil paints instead of
watercolor pigments (I'm sure most of you are familiar with the
process) In short, I believe, but have not confirmed, that I tried to
clear the prints too soon and did not let the oil paint completely dry.
It would seem to reason if the oil paint is still wet then them gum
would be weakened and not as tough as a dried, latent gum image. At
least that is my theory. To test, I decided to clear a print that, even
though was a failure, was sitting around for two weeks and was
thoroughly dried. It cleared fine with no erasing of the image. Who
knows?
When I coat my paper (gum and pot di only) I do one coating, let dry and
then coat once more as evenly as possible with a foam brush. The double
coating is useful due to the etching process which helps to give the
print better tones and allows room for a second color to be added.
As far as exposing each print, I use one contact frame and if it is a
clear day, I expose 2-5 prints, one after another, between 11am and 2pm.
My exposures hover around 7 minutes (I use paper as my interpositive
not a transparent medium like film). Hopefully soon I will have an
image or two available to share with the group.
Regards,
Bill-
Katharine Thayer wrote:
> Kate's points are all excellent. I might say one thing a bit
> differently, although we may well be saying the same thing in different
> ways: to me the issue of exposing all the way through to the paper and
> the issue of a too-thick coating flaking off are two separate issues.
> There is a range of coating thickness within which it's simply a matter
> of exposing enough to harden the gum all the way through to the paper,
> (and BTW this is true even of very thin layers; even the thinnest of
> layers looks a lot deeper to the ions and photons involved than it does
> to us). But beyond a certain thickness or pigment concentration, you
> could expose all day and that stuff is still going to flake off as soon
> as it hits the water.
> kt
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