Re: tonal inversion and pigment loads

On Jan 26, 2006, at 4:52 PM, Christina Z. Anderson wrote:

>> By the way, I am not of the opinion that gum has a limit in the
>> quantity of pigment that it can hold, and that staining is the
>> result of the pigment 'having to go somewhere'. Solutions have a
>> saturation point but gels do not. Any tube of watercolour is the
>> proof that gum can hold more pigment than we ever use in gum
>> dichromate.
>> Tom Sobota
>>
>
> I agree with you, Tom. There may be an **aesthetic** limit to the
> amount of pigment one may need to express a particular depth of
> color in a particular print, but to reach a point where too much
> pigment is too much for gum to handle would be well beyond needing
> that much pigment in the first place. Always exceptions to every
> gum generality, of course, I suppose. Chris
>

And I agree with you, in fact that's what I've been saying, that the
amount of pigment that causes staining, flaking, or inversion as a
result of overpigmentation is way beyond the amount of pigment you
need to print any particular pigment at full saturation. But still,
people use way too much pigment all the time, and in fact I did it
myself when I started gum printing. So I think it's worth educating
people about.
Katharine
Received on Thu Jan 26 20:46:40 2006