Re: Determining SPT with gum Was: Gums a la Demachy and Puyo

Terry & all

Basically, this message is for everyone that find me annoying. I apologise
for my lazyness when I write messages, for me it's a pain to write in
english and I cut it probably much to short to be useful. Before everyone
puts my emails in the trash basket automatically I'll try to convey the
major idea behind my rather unsuccessful attempt to explain my point of view
about learning gum printing.

I use to be a teacher and my academic studies where in teaching technical
trade (bachelor degree) and a severe back problem put me in permanent sick
leave. I would also say that I have above average manual abilities, I like
to do thing with my hands and it usually is very easy for me to acquire new
techniques but I also have the bad habit of seeking a high level of quality
in my work in general and especially for stuff I like and yes I'm lazy with
stuff I don't like. I'm also a self learner and I have studied a large
spectrum of subject, mostly technical, on my own and lastly, out of habit
may be, when I try to learn something new it is always with this idea in the
back of my head, "what do I need to know to be able to teach it
(professionaly) to someone else".

I know perfectly well the method(s) most of you suggest for me and for
everyone else for that matter, to learn gum printing. It is a very effective
method to learn how to do things like procedures but it's not much for the
"why" and also it is generally very time consuming for most people. I said
above I'm a perfectionist and I'm mostly interested in the why part. I've
learn through the years that knowing why things like gum printing are like
they are is the best way for me, from this knowedge I'm perfectly capable to
devise a strategy to teach myself the how to do it. In this case, there are
many of you who gave hints that gum printing is not a strait process per say
because of the huge possibilities the medium allows and one can not
realistically devise a single procedure that would allow one to print all
types of gum prints one can make. Can one learn gum printing by mostly
practicing hands on and thus learning a feel for it, of course it is and
most of you have learn gum and many other things that way.

My main objection to using this learning method in this particular case is
that one is bound to limit him or herself to a very limited subset of the
gum printing potential. The principal limiting factor is time, it is well
known that this learning method is time consuming and it is not very well
suited for learning theorical knowledge. For example I could teach any of
you how to repair anything on your air conditioner and this without teaching
you (practically) anything about electricity or refregeration per say. If
you have about 6 month of free time ahead of you I can prove this to you,
I've done it before and to boys with a lot less potential then most if not
all of you have. All this is very nice but you wouldn't understand much on
how an air conditioner work, the knowledge you would have acquired would be
very specific to the most common ACs I covered with the program I devise
with my partner and it's probably obsolete by now. But if I had thought you
or these kids the knowledge required to understand what they have learn to
do intuitively with practice, this would have allowed them to use there
knowledge on other devices or to progress with the evolution and addition of
technologies in this particular field.

I hope you can extrapolate from this simplistic example what I mean, think
of the knowledge required to elaborate a series of exercises by which the
student will learn the abilities you set for them and that I'm interested in
this required knowledge, not the exercices per say, these I can device by
myself, that's my specialty. I know I was very useless before in trying to
convey this concept and I hope this time I've done a better job of it.

I hope you'll forgive me for being lazy, I've spent 3 1/2 hours on this
message, yes, it's not a typo and it always take me forever to write. Don't
worry about me giving workshops on gum either it's well beyond my physical
abilities and of course I know I'm pretty far knowledge wise from even
thinking about it.

Regards and please forgive me for being such a neandertal.
Yves

PS. In the future I'll restrein myself to asking questions, I think it's
gone a be easier on every one.

----- Original Message -----
From: TERRYAKING@aol.com
To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
Sent: Sunday, July 16, 2006 4:08 AM
Subject: Re: Determining SPT with gum Was: Gums a la Demachy and Puyo

In a message dated 15/07/2006 12:42:28 GMT Daylight Time,
gauvreau-yves@cgocable.ca writes:

The only suggestion I would make to those experience gum printers is this,
please don't say to newbies or want to be gum printers, just get some gum,
some pigments and a piece of paper and go have fun

Yves

The one thing that seems to come across in your comments is that you have
not had much experience of gum printing.

As understanding the aesthetic and technique of the 'masters' is very
important, I found it worrying that you had not read enough on the subject
of gum printing to have heard of Demachy and Puyo.

Of course it is worthwhile to establish the different density ranges one can
obtain from different methods of gum printing. One also needs to understand
the such matters of contrast and perception of contrast. But proper use of
these tools can only come with practice.

The easiest way to learn how to do it is to go on a workshop.

I will be running a three day workshop in Richmond if anyone is interested.

Terry
Received on 07/19/06-08:46:24 AM Z