Re: Further Gum Woes was Gum woes revisited

Hi all,
How fun--gum stuff.

I just got back from a 10 day vacation to find that my sis sent me a 9 meg
file that glutted my inbox, so who knows if this will be received or not by
the alt list. All my emails were bouncing.....arggh. (but I did get a
wicked tan, read 6 fiction books, and dyed my hair Clemson orange for fun!)

Anyway, David, au contraire, I try hard to GET gum shine with more layers!
I'm not sure what canon you were reading because I have never come across
that fact, except in reference to the fact that gum is very hard to
photograph and get the real feel of the image due to the gloss on the
surface. I have best luck with flatbed scans, but when you do larger gums,
which all of mine have been as of late, that doesn't work.

So keep those gums shining..and if you find the "canon" source, let me know
the reference?

In answer to your second question, is it overexposure that is the problem?
If not, in other words, if your gum print develops up in a normal amount of
time, then could it be the amount of color you have in your mix and that
coupled with your negs perhaps being too thin? What kind of negs are you
using? This would determine my advice--your neg, your curve, and whether
tricolor or you are mimicking tricolor with a BW neg.

  You should be able to get a fully tonal gum in 3 coats. Are you using a
BW neg or a tricolor separation? If BW and the same neg over and over, then
you can get the tonal thing going by more pigment, less exposure. In other
words, highlights are little pigment, thin and exposed long, midtones more
pigment less exposure, and shadows even more pigment and even less exposure.

The other thing, and the one area I tend to fail at the most, when doing a
tricolor, is I misjudge on the amount of the yellow layer (my second layer)
to remove. I think I am removing too much, and then when my gum is finished
it has too much yellow left in the highlights. But if you are not doing
tricolor sep negs, this does not apply.

Forgive me if I have not read all the posts and you have answered your neg
type already.
Chris

> I read somewhere in the 'canon' that good gumprints should not have a
> shine to the surface. After 3 or 4 coats mine do shine slightly . I have
> never seen a gumprint in the flesh so I must ask.
> Question 1.
> a) Shine or no shine?
> b) If no shine, how can I avoid it?
>
> I am trying to build up an image by the application of thin coats of
> pigment/gum. I've tried long exposures with little gum/pigment, short
> exposures with little gum/pigment and the same with lots of gum/pigment.
> The images lack 'punch' . All parts of the image seem to come up
> together..
> Question 2. How do get that shadow/highlight thing going?
> David Hatton
>
Received on Sat May 28 07:01:30 2005