Re: Gum Tri-Color Yellow

Well, this doesn't prove anything one way or another, but just out of
curiosity this afternoon, (well okay, curiosity plus avoidance of
another thing I didn't want to do) I printed a "tricolor" with PV19. I
say "tricolor" because it wasn't done with separations, I just printed
one negative three times. (I just wanted to do a little test print and I
don't have any little test negatives in tricolor separations).

I found I had three different versions of PV19, so I mixed all three
with gum and chose the one that looked most like a true magenta. The
others were (1) more rose-ish, (M. Graham "quinacridone rose") and (2)
purple (M. Graham "quinacridone violet.") The one I chose was Daniel
Smith "quinacridone red." (There's a good example of a paint being named
after a different pigment than the pigment it contains.) I was
surprised, with all three of the PV19s, how sort of wimpy the color was.
I put quite a lot of pigment in all three before I decided it was never
going to get any more saturated than it already was.

I used the PY110 for yellow, and indanthrone (PB 60) for blue, since I
thought the indanthrone would be closer to the depth and hue of the
cyanotype than the blues than I normally use.

The red and yellow printed well and looked good together, as Tom
described. But when I put the blue on, what I got was a reddish brown
overall tone. I put another layer of yellow on just in case there wasn't
enough yellow, but it didn't change anything, just turned the brown
slightly more orange. And just in case for some reason the blue wasn't
holding its own, I added another, heavier layer of blue (it was almost
black and very heavily pigmented), but the extra blue didn't turn the
brown black, as I would have expected, but just gave the brown a sort of
purplish hue.

Like I say, this isn't definitive by any means, but makes me continue to
wonder if, perhaps, there's something about PV19, or the combination of
PV19 and PY110, that creates this brownish tone when added to blue.

Katharine Thayer

Katharine Thayer wrote:
>
> Tom,
> The brownish tone still doesn't make sense to me, even as a function of
> curves or exposures. You may of course prove me completely wrong about
> that and are welcome to do so.
>
> But to me it's more likely related to the quinacridone violet that
> you're using for the magenta. I hate to keep recommending pigment
> changes to you, but I'm inclined to think a quinacridone red (PV209)
> would serve you better. I haven't used PV19 very much, but I have seen
> brownish tones when it is mixed with different colors.
>
> Sam would know better, but I also wonder about how different reds and
> yellows work with the cyanotype, if it's possible that you'd need
> different red and yellow pigments with the cyanotype than what would
> work best with one or another of the blue pigments.
> Katharine
Received on Sun Jun 27 20:06:50 2004