Re: gum printing color combinations

Christina, this is very interesting. Will you put this tests
somewhere where we can see them?

Tom Sobota
Madrid, Spain

At 19:22 20/12/2005, you wrote:
>Dear All,
>
>Here are some of my pigment experiences this week:
>
>I've printed 5 of the same print side by side with different yellow
>and red pigment combinations. It was a fun experiment! I chose an
>image that has reds and yellows and an area of way dark to see how
>opacity of pigments affects an image. It is a night street scene of
>Shibuya, Japan, with areas of glowy white and lots of neon.
>
>I started a classification in my mind like this:
>
>green biased yellows, red (orange) biased yellows, and brown yellows
>
>magenta reds, brilliant orange reds, and deeper blood (browner) reds.
>
>green biased (cyan) blues and red biased (ultramarine) blues
>
>I proved to myself that colors put in the right place with tricolor
>separations look normal as I thought they would. I may prefer one
>color combination/palette over another, but they all look "normal"
>(just like Tom Sobota's mask example).
>
>Colors I thought might not work out (raw sienna, quinacridone gold,
>and quinacridone coral) surprised me. I think color is much more
>flexible than even I thought.
>
>I realized that a lot of judgments on pigment (opacity,
>transparency, color bias, etc.) aren't as critical in gum because
>you dilute the pigment in a gum arabic vehicle. Also, how the
>pigment looks brushed by itself on a piece of white paper doesn't
>quite show how it looks in a layer of dichromated, exposed gum, AND
>then on top of each other.
>
>It also reminds me that printing gum over and over (and over!) is
>the best teacher yet.
>
>What seems more important is the balance of color saturation of the
>choices. Raw Sienna, for instance, is more weakly pigmented than
>quinacridone gold.
>
>I haven't yet sorted out the bias issue--usually in painting (my
>background) you use similarly biased pigments in combination to
>avoid muddiness. I'm not sure if that is true, necessary, or even
>the opposite in gum. Any ideas?
>
>Most of the over $200 (gasp) money has been well spent--I love
>Rowney Permanent Yellow PY138. It is a brilliant middle
>yellow. Worth buying. It is also available by Fragonard, Permanent
>Lemon Yellow I think it is called. I like it because it is not as
>green biased as a Hansa Yellow Light PY3 and not as orange biased as
>an isoindoline like PY110 or PY139. So I can go chartreusy with the
>PY3, middle of the road with the PY138, and deep gold with the PY139..
>
>The other colors that so far have performed beautifully that
>surprised me: Daniel Smith Perylene Maroon PR179--so bloody red it
>even evokes an iron smell when I use it (I'm weird). And Daniel
>Smith Pyrrole Crimson PY264, another deeper, but more bluish red. I
>liked them just as well as the usual magenta PV19R I use. So I can
>go magenta with PV19R, orange red with a PR209,260, 264, or 255, and
>bloody with a PR179.
>
>The odd thing--Old Holland Vermilion PR260, the only brand that uses
>this particular pigment, completely washed off to the point where I
>thought maybe I had forgotten to put in the dichromate. I'll have
>to redo that layer again. All others exposed as per normal. This
>pigment is different somehow and may require completely different
>curve calibration if, upon my redo, I discover it is not operator error.
>
>I really like quinacridone gold with perylene maroon, and raw sienna
>with pyrrole crimson. I am combining the brilliant Rowney PY138
>with the brilliant Old Holland Vermillion when it finally decides to
>stay on my paper :).
>
>That's it at the moment. I'm soooo glad it is semester break time....
>Chris
Received on Tue Dec 20 17:33:08 2005