Chris
Great, it really does work and take much of the uncertainty out of gum
printing.
Both Dick Sullivan and I have said for years that alt processes are like
cooking. My version is that if you can bake a christmas cake and paint a front
door with gloss paint, the whole of alt is yours.
Clearly you would need to mix a strong solutuon of the gum arabic first and
then stir it into the the thinner material.
My own approach was take 500 g of the solid gum arabic and add 500 ml of cold
water and then just leave it for a couple of days. I have a litre jar of gum
made in that way.
When I bought my Baume hydrometer the guy told me that a lot of people
complained that they dipped the meter in the water and the scale did not change at
all.
I got some students once to make a four-colour gum print taking the picture
on film at 0930, had it developed and made film separations from it before
lunch and then made the print in the afternoon.
It's great fun isn't it ? And the students get a great kick out of that sort
of thing.
As you imply, most of this is a bit of this and a bit of that just like
cooking. Can you imagine Van Dyke
measuring the exact length of paint coming out of a tube ? I have found that
those who become obsessed with exact amounts or exact ways of doing things,
get alt a bad name.
As to how to zen it. I tell students that I can always tell someone who is
not going to do it well at first; it is the kind of young man who blushes easily
and is not very good with women. Either laughter or meditation for a minute,
with hands a la Durer, seem to work quite well
Note for Loris. I have a friend who was brought up in Kandy; he tells me that
he used to tap the gum acacia tree in his garden to make his gum prints. Do
they sell gum acacia trees at your garden centre ? Do you know the genus and
variety ?
Terry
Terry King FRPS
RPS Historical Group (Chairman)
www.hands-on-pictures.com/
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1. An excellent thing is as rare as it is difficult.(Spinoza)
2. A man's reach should be beyond his grasp or what's a heaven for.(Browning)
3. Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora.(Occam's razor or
'Keep it simple!').
4. Nullius in Verba (Horace), 'Take no man's word for it' (motto of the
Royal Society).
5. If ignorance is bliss, why are not more people happy ? (anon)
Received on Thu Mar 30 09:13:43 2006
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