Re: Help with gum pritns on black paper with white Gouache.

<big snip from Katharine> I found, initially, that the gouache gave
> beautiful tonal gradations through the midtones (it was a photo of
> eggs, the only thing in the studio that I had a contact-size positive
> on film of, and don't ask me why; the original subject was white and
> brown eggs on a white table, and the white on black gum print rendered
> white and grey eggs with a tonal gradation which rendered the rounded
> shapes of both the mid-tone and white eggs very nicely against the white
> background.. This nicely-rendered gum print came out of the water
> intact but was completely lost in drying; the gum and gouache sank into
> the very absorbent paper and left nothing of the subtleties of the print
> on the surface, just shapes like cutouts. So I'm inclined to point to
> the paper.

My experience exactly, except it was on a multilayered dark gum background
on white paper. In the water the image looked great; when dry, it almost
disappeared except for the shadow areas, so it resembled what Carmen calls a
high contrast image. It didn't sink into the paper, though--but was a
factor of the combination of dark background (whether of paper or gum) and
light pigment.
I did this a number of times with prints, last semester, as a matter of
fact. Each time I tried it, I would literally have to print over and over
and over to get something to even show up. Only three prints did I even
think worth keeping, and they aren't my favorites, except for the one on my
website.
When I saw Sam Wang's luscious silkscreens at about that time, still timely
even tho they are a couple decades old, they got me to thinking. He printed
a bunch of them dark to light, and they looked all frosty, and really neat.
That's what made me think there must be a way to do it with gum, too, and
the bitmap effect. I just haven't gone back to it again to figure it out.
Maybe Carmen will, and report to the list.
Chris
Received on Fri Jan 14 20:52:11 2005