Re: Could someone summarize that gum up or down discussion?

On Apr 15, 2006, at 2:15 AM, Peter Marshall wrote:

>
> The reason why transfer jumped straight into my mind was in part
> because of the different nature of the substrate and a hope that
> the bond between gum and plastic sheet might be rather less than
> that between gum and paper so as to make this possible.

As I described before, I've found that gum, once dried, is so
attached even to glass that it takes three changes of razor blade to
scrape off an 8x10 print, and that trying to take it off while it's
still wet just turns it into slurry. But one thing I haven't tried
is soaking the hardened and dried gum layer, and that's what I would
suggest to Marek: soak the dried image on the substrate in warmish
water and try to loosen it gently with a mixing knife or something
flat that you could gently ease under the layer, and see if you can
float the layer off, like a Polaroid emulsion transfer. I have
serious doubts that you could keep the layer intact, but I haven't
tried it and don't know for sure. To me, a carbon-type transfer
simply doesn't make sense, because as Dave pointed out earlier, gum
and gelatin have different natures that make the success of such an
approach improbable.

> Although it is always dangerous to judge from reproduction, Marek's
> image seemed to have a more delicate tonality than I've previously
> seen in one-coat gums.

Yes, that was what blew me away about Marek's print. I certainly
don't know of a way to get that kind of subtlety in the mid and high
tones and in the darker tones at the same time, in one printing.
Understand, I'm not saying that you can't get darkish and middish and
lightish tones in one print; that's not what I'm arguing. What I'm
saying is that you can't get subtlety in both deep tones and light
tones in the same print, IME. This is a problem of the gum emulsion
itself, as Sandy rightly said earlier, not of the negative, and IMO
can't be fixed by being more sophisticated about the curve of the
negative. If you want a lot of subtle gradation in the highlights,
they have to be laid down with a lighter pigment load that can't
possibly give you a deep DMax; if you want a really deep DMax you
have to use a very heavy pigment load that can't possibly give you
subtlety in the highlights, just as Sandy said. Marek's print
showed a way to get both in one print, that's why I consider it a
breakthrough.

I'm always ready to be pleasantly surprised, as I was with Marek's
print, but I've never yet seen a one-coat gum print that was made by
adjusting the curve of the negative to fit gum's short tonal scale,
that didn't look, well... compressed. Sure, you get some relatively
dark tones, some mid tones and some relatively light tones, but you
can't change gum's short scale nature by the type of negative you
use. The only way, IME, to make a gum print with a long tonal scale
with delicate gradation throughout the scale (until I saw Marek's
print that points to another way) is by multiple printings. But
like I said, I'm always ready to be pleasantly surprised.

I'm inclined to agree with Sandy that the problem here may be a
problem of semantics: maybe those who say one can make a fully tonal
print in one coat by adjusting the negative mean something different
by "fully tonal" than those who say it's unlikely. There's "fully
tonal" as in the seagull print on paper at the bottom of the tests I
posted earlier in the discussion, which is fully tonal in the sense
of having tones from dark to light, and then there's fully tonal as
in marek's print, which expresses a living, breathing quality in the
tonality that IME you just can't get in an ordinary one-coat gum, no
matter how you make the negative. But like I say, I'm always ready
to be pleasantly surprised.

Katharine
Received on Sun Apr 16 10:23:56 2006