From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 03/04/03-10:29:00 PM Z
On Tue, 4 Mar 2003, Matti Koskinen wrote:
> hi
>
> I'm having trouble with watercolor papers. The cheap one, that would be
> ideal for practising doesn't hold the pigments, they just get off from
> the surface. I bought two sheets of Saunders 300gsm paper and the prints
> are ok. But here one sheet costs $6 and as 99% of my prints fail, it's
> getting too expensive. What kind of paper should do the job well for
> practising? Does some sort of sizing help?
Rives BFK is good for a coat or two with no added size -- but the problem
is that if it hasn't been preshrunk you can't register a 2nd coat, and
once you preshrink you lose the surface size left by the manufacturer, and
ALSO raise the nap of the paper, so then you have to have sized it -- or
be working against another gradient...
Rives Heavyweight is also good, as are many others -- if you're not
working large you don't need the 300 gsm, and can save money with a
lighter paper -- almost any watercolor or printing paper that isn't too
smooth is good with a nice coat of 3% gelatin size, hardened.
> Does anybody have a curve for producing digital negatives for gum print?
> I'm using Gimp, so a curve posted for cyanotype recently is the format
> I'm searching for.
As far as I've been able to tell, any "curve" that doesn't say which
printer it's to be printed on, with which kind of ink, for which
substrate, for which kind of paper, is -- at best -- a fantasy. Or let's
be kind and say it's a "starting point," but IME that's more trouble than
making your own curve from the start.
Judy
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : 04/22/03-02:37:24 PM Z CST