Re: Some temperaprint questions - beware! these are dummy, beginners questions

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On Wed, 4 Feb 2004, Loris Medici wrote:
> Assuming I'm going to print monochrome gum on a 300gsm (140lb?) watercolor
> paper in a total of four impressions (highlights, midtones, shadows and a
> last adjustment layer):
>
> 1. Coat layer #1: 3mins
CUT
> Makes a total of 472mins = 7hours 52mins! And this is excluding the
time
> needed for stretching and sizing the paper.

Loris, you have two misconceptions here...

First, you seem to think one does nothing the whole time a coat is
drying and a print is soaking but stand at attention... I myself usually
keep about 10 prints in progress, often 4 or 5 in trays developing, and
others in different stages... (Some prints develop for 24 hours -- so you
could really add up time.) However that's like saying that baking a loaf
of bread takes 24 hours, because it takes that long to rise, or clabbering
casein takes x days because it sits that long. The actual time expended
is probably a half hour, for mixing and kneading... Same for gum printing.
Coating takes less than a minute. Drying each coat, BTW, takes about 15
minutes with an electric fan in the drying area, which is my 2nd point.

I don't recommend heat drying, because even if you manage to do it
delicately without fogging the print, it's STILL a great big variable in
exposure time. I once taught a workshop to a class where the teacher was
also a gum printer. So I asked her, when we got ready to expose, for a
ballpark time. She said 12 to 15 minutes. We exposed that long & EVERY
LAST PRINT in the entire class was hard as a rock. Nothing would develop.

I didn't know where we'd gone wrong, reviewed all steps and materials,
etc... for the 3 day workshop. Finally, to make a long painful story
shorter, I found that the actual exposure time with that light source was
from 1 to 3 minutes. It turned out that this teacher routinely heat dried
her prints. By then the workshop was over.

But anyway, Chris, if you put a little electric fan in the bathroom it
should also dry you paper quicker, tho it could be pretty humid in there.
Can you hang a black drape behind a piece of furniture? Doesn't have to
be perfectly light proof... I have a space like that with 3 shelves in
it... and lay the paper on a slight angle but essentially flat to dry...

Tho PS, it's true: Standing and swooning with joy over your print as it
reveals itself in the developing water (turning it face up) could be very
time consuming.

Judy
Received on Thu Feb 5 19:25:29 2004