Re: Gums a la Demachy and Puyo

On Jul 10, 2006, at 2:43 AM, davidhatton@totalise.co.uk wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> While we patiently wait for Terry to finish his garden..What other
> pigments would
> Demachy use for one coat gums? Plus, how do I modify Vienna Red to
> be darker? Is
> it possible? I've looked on the internet and the pigment (red Oxide
> (?))in some
> images seems to have a darker tone to it than mine.

Hi David,
You can darken a pigment by adding black, as has been suggested, but
another and perhaps better way is to add some of the complementary
color. Painters have been doing this for centuries. Unfortunately I
can't tell you off the top of my head what the exact mixing
complement would be for PR 101, (all my books and papers are still in
boxes) but since burnt umber is a good mixing complement for
ultramarine, my guess would be to go a little greener for the
complement for PR101, which is redder than burnt umber. So, maybe
Prussian (a good Prussian, not one of the ones that shifts-- look at
handprint.com to see which are the permanent Prussians, and now that
I think of it, handprint might also give you the mixing complement as
well) . If I were set up I'd try it myself, but unfortunately I
don't have my printing platform set up yet, and the sun's not shining
today either so I can't just do a fast print in the sun.

Loris is right when he says that a mixture will behave differently
than either pure pigment, but in my experience that's more an issue
for layering color than for one-coat gums. When you layer mixtures,
you can get some really bizarre color effects, not at all what one
might have expected considering just the colors themselves rather
than how the pigment mixtures might behave. But when you mix
pigments to print in one coat, you can easily get an understanding of
how that mixture works by itself as a mixture, and print accordingly;
since you're not layering, you should find that the color will print
as you mixed it, at least that's always been my experience, and I've
always used color mixtures for one-coats, in fact I don't believe
I've ever printed a one-coat that was a single pigment. Even when I
print black, I always mix some other color into it. Good luck,
Katharine
Received on 07/10/06-10:49:10 AM Z