speckling on BFK

Cleaning up back mail (stalling on tangling for the last time ever with
the data base) I came across this from Chris... worth many more comments
than will follow -- but I also had a THOUGHT about her funny speckling
which may be far fetching, but could be interesting:

On Fri, 23 Apr 2004, Christina Z. Anderson wrote:
> This week I had a hilarious (not really) lesson in staining I thought
> I'd share. Personally, there may be a relationship between amount of pigment
> in the mix and staining,

There certainly can be a relation between amount of pigment and staining
-- if you get a little stain, and you use more pigment, odds are to get
more stain... The point is the extra staining is relative to the extra
pigment... not a magic threshold below which no, above which yes....

> ...I never have flaking occur due to increased pigment, as some say
> happens. Flaking is directly related only to too thick a coat, IMP).

I agree, but I suspect whoever says it's from increased pigment doesn't
notice that the increased pigment is making the coat thicker.

> I have been doing a bunch of gum prints, and I had the oddest stain
> effect crop up. The paper does not stain with the sizing, except in the top
> most tiny fibers of the paper that did not receive the sizing because it
> soaked in too fast. Thus I have a wonderful speckle effect across some of my
> prints that does NOT come out with any kind of soak. It is only in the
> highlights where there was no hardened gum/pigment layer to protect the
> paper, and only with the third coat of pigment. I was doing a light shining
> thru a keyhole image, and the speckled thalo was in the very center of the
> keyhole, where the paper was bare of hardened gum, and not even on the
> perimeter of the lighted keyhole, where there was a modicum of hardened
> yellow color.

Now here's my question -- did you get that speckling with paper you didn't
harden outside? If so, stop reading now. But if it was only the paper
you hardened outside, here's a recollection:

I had taught a gum workshop at ICP about 10 years ago, and a month later
got a frantic call from one of the students: Her gum prints were coming
out all speckled. She couldn't get any image at all, just speckling. So I
told her to come over and we spent the afternoon, testing her paints on
her paper, her paints on my paper, her gum on her paper, her gum on my
paper, etc.... Though it didn't happen that neatly, but was some time
before we formulated that method. Ultimately it became clear that ANY
paints and any gum speckled on her paper. And not on mine. Finally, she
had a thought: She'd gone to her home in Vermont and gelatin sized the
paper there. While the paper (Rives BFK, BTW) was out all over the house
freshly gelatined to dry, she noticed a strange kind of pollen in the
air... settling as a yellow powder over everything.

She sized new paper in town and had no further problems.

cheers,

Judy
Received on Tue May 4 20:53:57 2004