Re: Gum speckles, sizing...glut versus gly website

> Katharine said: And I'm unsure about the cyanotype example-- which is the
> glut
> and which the glyoxal.
> at any rate
> I'm not sure what this has to do with speckling in gum printing.

The glut is on the left, and the gly is on the right. Same paper, different
size. I shared this because these are cyanotype underlayers for gum prints,
and the glyoxal prints decidedly lower contrast and paler than the glut. I
shared it for a point of interest, and have no idea why that was a bad
thing. Good heavenly days. I also sent Darryl a pic of the cyanotype white
speckles of which Judy talks about.

> Don said: Though not directly related to gum I think what Chris was
> pointing out was
> the differences of the two hardeners and their effect on gelatin sizing.

As I said above, it was a gum related thing, and Don is also correct in that
the sizing will make a difference in the cyanotype underlayer. I,
personally, was surprised at this, as all are FAEW paper.
>
>>
> Katharine said: I thought this site was supposed to be about speckling in
> gum
> printing-- to provide a taxonomy of speckling so that we could come to
> some agreement on what we mean by speckles and by stains and so forth.
> But as constituted at present, it looks more like images intended to
> support Chris's position on glyoxal vs glutaraldehyde, which means I
> would have to provide different images than I was thinking of in order
> to participate in that debate visually, and that's not what I signed on
> for.

I'm not sure why this would be the case, but, Darryl, go ahead and pull the
images off the website that don't pertain to speckling, and Katharine, post
away. We are ALL waiting with bated breath.

> Katharine said: Yes, I will concede that technically you could say that
> some parts of
> the stain on BFK look like speckles, but to me it doesn't make sense to
> call something stain on one paper and speckles on another paper, simply
> because stain takes on different appearances on different papers. To me
> that's just confusing.

I don't find this confusing at all. Speckling is a visual description of an
issue in gum. Speckling to me is small spots, like on a robin's egg. That
speckling has different causes doesn't have to change the visual term. We
have white cyanotype speckling, as Judy has mentioned, stain speckling that
happens on bumpy paper like on Darryl's website, stain speckling I have also
seen in white highlights not in the valleys but on the top pinprick paper
fibers of a piece of paper, and speckling that you and Judy have observed
and related to boiled gelatin--oh, and a speckling Judy has also referred to
as being caused by pollen in the air perhaps interfering with a student's
sizing process outside. There is also a speckling that may be better called
grain, from brushing during development that leaves a grainy, gritty
surface.

In fact, we could even call it "speckle stain", "speckle grain", "speckle
fibers", "speckle boil"....

> Katharine said: My insistence on calling this "stain" and the
> speckling in Chris's example "speckles" has to do with the etiology of
> the problem. Even if part of it looks like speckles, the unwelcome
> appearance of the BFK example is caused by stain, and its appearance is
> a function of the paper, as I've said already.

I disagree that it is solely a function of paper choice. Roman disproves
that with no speckling on glut sized Rives. However, it could be other
things such as pigment load, exposure, brushing, etc. But in practice I
might agree that Rives is more difficult than other harder papers such as
FAEW--which is why I brought up the issue in the first place, to help
beginning gummists overcome a frequent problem. There's nothing wrong with
trying a possible variable.
Chris
Received on Thu Sep 15 09:23:04 2005