Sizing, glyoxal (was: Re: APIS, hydroquinone hardening

Christina Z. Anderson wrote:
>
  Katharine, Sam, and others don't size.
>

To be completely accurate, this statement should be qualified in my
case. While it's true that for most of my gum printing career I've found
it unnecessary to size, and that probably 98% of all my work over the
years has been printed on unsized paper, and that my website page which
was written 2-3 years ago still says that I don't size, at the moment
it's less true than in the past. At the present moment I'm printing on
Arches Bright White which, like the last several variants of its sister
paper Arches traditional white, speckles when printed unsized, even on
the first coat.

(For illustration of this speckling see

http://www.pacifier.com/~kthayer/html/Seps.html

So I've been sizing either with a mixture of gelatin and gesso, which I
like a lot, except that it's kind of messy to mix, or (more recently)
glyoxal-hardened gelatin, which I find quite satisfactory*. I also
experimented briefly several months ago with a glyoxal-hardened gum
size, which I was finding interesting but haven't had time to go back
and experiment more with.

* I still haven't seen any yellowing in the four sheets of
glyoxal-hardened gelatin-sized Fabriano Extra-White, (two rinsed two not
rinsed) that I sized and put away in February to watch for yellowing.
So when I decided to try sizing with glyoxal (so far I've done only
twenty quarter-sheets for printing pigment tests on) I didn't bother to
rinse. But I've found that many of the Arches Bright White sheets,
glyoxal-sized and not rinsed, have turned ivory in a few days, which
shows how much one test is worth as far as drawing any conclusions. But
I've also found that if I go ahead and print on this ivoried paper, it
turns pristine white again in the soak. So in my shop and on this paper,
the yellowing just isn't a problem.
Katharine
Received on Wed Jul 13 18:28:20 2005