Re: printing on vellum

My students have been printing out scanned negatives on cheap tracing vellum
from Office Depot and you are right, David, they do produce a softer image but
have been printing beautifully in Van Dyke. These are high school students and
very careless and never do anything the same way twice but they seem to be
getting good prints (from the vellum negatives) easier than from their on going
struggles with lith film. The vellum seems to cut down on the contrast problem
they have with the lith negs. Matting the prints on a high quality matt board
enhances that soft warm look. I studied platinum printing in the early
eighties at Pratt with Alan Newman when he was printing the Howes Brothers
negatives for the book New England Reflections. All done on tracing vellum
with beautiful results.

I don't know why printing on vellum would cause anyone disdain!! I would now
like to try some higher quality vellums, maybe a bit smoother than this one.
Do you have any recommendations?

Janet Neuhauser

By the way, we have had no luck at all making a color ink jet prints on the
vellum, although some of the screw ups have been intriguing. The color ink
doesn't want to soak into the paper which is odd because the black ink along
dries quickly and well. Why would that be?

"David J. Greiner Jr." wrote:

> I've recently been experimenting with clearprint vellum, mainly as a
> substrate for gum, cyanotype and vandyke. I decided, one night, to try
> printing negatives with it just to see how well it worked (being rather
> translucent after all). Just for reference, it won't work for negatives if
> you're looking for nice sharp images, as it adds a grainy/fuzzy effect. Now
> since I've been spending most of my time making abstract pinhole images
> lately, it added an interesting effect for me. One person's disdain is
> another person's new trademark I suppose.
>
> Anyhow, as far as printing out images, it actually prints quite well (to me
> anyways). I have two printers, one is an older Epson 600 and the other one
> is an HP Deskjet. On the Epson, I've found that the photo settings present
> the best image, where as on the HP the transparancy setting works the best
> (maybe vice versa, I did this a month ago). So you'll probably want to
> print out a few small images and play with the settings to see what works
> best for you and your printer. Either way, it takes a few minutes for the
> ink to sink into the paper, but once it does you don't have any smearing
> problems as with photopaper or transparancies. Well, I didn't actually go
> out of my way to test this, but I touched the ink a few times and my finger
> wasn't black afterwards. Also, since the paper is so translucent, I've
> found that images look the best when they're in front of a white background.
>
> Hope that helps somewhat.
>
> -David-
>
> *****
> "I don't really trust ideas, especially good ones...."
> -Robert Rauschenburg
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Barry Kleider [mailto:bkleider@sihope.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 10:07 AM
> To: alt-photo-process-l@skyway.usask.ca
> Subject: printing on vellum
>
> I'm trying to simulate the effects of blindness, eye diseases, and other
> vision problems experienced by the blind and the visually impaired.
>
> In one set of images, I'll goop up a filter with Vaseline.
>
> I'll throw a toilet paper tube in front of my lens to simulate tunnel
> vision.
>
> Does anyone have experience doing inkjet prints on vellum?
>
> Barry Kleider
> Photographer. Arts Educator.
> 612.722.9701
> email: bkleider@sihope.com
> Web: www.barryphotography.com
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Received on Fri Jan 23 18:18:33 2004