Gum Printing

It is painful to note here that the current chaos, as well as some sort of evil spirits or cyber Demons are making my life somewhere in the miserable range. The water damage chaos not withstanding, the printer I purchased off Amazon was to be a refurbished model, fully functional yada yada. Upon firing up the miserable thing, first reading on the screen is the print head is either loose or missing. This is a special Hell for me, with the old one three weeks in the shop with three new print heads ordered and tried out, all failed upon arrival. Same here.

Not that I'm whining here. There has been a pregnant gap on this blog, trying workarounds and repairs, and buying another printer, which doesn't print. I was, however, sufficiently astute as to also purchase the repair or replace warranty with said printer. The terms of which direct me to wait thirty days before I can claim the warranty. Thus, as ugly as it is, there will be another three weeks before I have a functioning printer in hand, or a replacement on its way. I will eventually prevail, irritating as that still seems at this time. I did make a new negative after I finally got the printer to communicate with the old print head. That will be a print test tomorrow. If it is worth posting, it will be done.

The down time for the digital negatives hasn't been completely wasted time. I have continued to print many more layers on my favorite gum subject, The Flute Player. I have posted that image in the past, a first test print last year. I have since cropped the image about 20% off the top & right side of the image. A much stronger view of the subject within context, yet not enough to distract from the Mime playing the flute.

Today's printing was the thirteenth printing of this gum, all but the four original print layers, each subsequent printing has had more than one color applied, each color locally applied. For printing a gum from a single black & white negative this technique is one of the most useful of all printing variables available gum printing. The process functions using subtractive color theory, something a watercolor artist understands directly. As I have mentioned more than once, a gum print is a photographic watercolor. The end 'color' of any given area is the sum of all the color layers stacked up in that spot. There are times, when eight or more color layers are stacked the summation is a sort of darker area, with somewhat indiscriminate color, although it can be said to be in some plane of the color wheel, if one actually sees all the colors.

Being a bit restricted in larger context of color, there are subtle colors I will miss until it is pointed out to me. Like that helps. Showing a gum print halfway or so through the printing is something I am hesitant to do, as it tends to be misleading in how the thing might turn out, due to the continued changes of the colors over time. One of the reasons this particular print is taking so long is because I am using very sheer, thin coats of each color, nothing like what is taught academically, or in the photo Bibles. Their instructions are to take 9ml of gum and mix a 1/2" of pigment, then of course mix that with equal parts dichromate. 1/2". It is also taught that float times run from thirty minutes to hours. Both of which seem extremely bizarre to me.

To evenly coat an 8x10 print area with gum, I use 2ml gum solution and 2ml of saturated dichromate (13% solution) I also use an 1 1/2" wide artist's brush for larger areas and make sure the coating is brushed out to a very thin layer, smooth and contiguous. For more local applications or small areas I have different smaller brushes that do their job well. The other part of the coating calculus is the gum/pigment mixture. I say a coating is sheer and thin. The thin part is explained above. The sheer part is the gum/pigment mixture. I keep a stubby artist's brush (plastic handle) around just for this purpose. The task is taking the small plastic end and dabbing a very small amount of watercolor pigment, literally a tiny dab of pigment, then begin mixing that thoroughly into the gum. I use a one ounce pill dispenser. They can be obtained at any pharmacy. I also bought a pack of 100 of them off the internet for $5.

I use the plastic brush end to mix the pigment, then pull it up the side of the container and watch it slide down. What I am looking for, usually, is how easy it is to see through the mixture. I want to be able to see through the color, yet for the most part, want it just thick enough to show the color well. You would not be able to see through a mixture of gum using a 1/2" strip of pigment in 9ml of gum, especially the premixed gum which is 14 Baum. Not very thick. If you can't see through the gum/color mix, then you obviously wouldn't be able to see through it once it has been printed onto the paper. That defeats the entire purpose of multiple layer gum printing. If the purpose is to make a gum print with one color layer, that might be an approach, although I have my doubts, as there would be absolutely no detail or texture of any kind.

I promise I will be posting this gum print as soon as it is done. If I could predict when that might possibly be, after seeing the printed layer today, the print is at the point that there remains three areas that will receive the final coats, to enrich those areas respectively with their own color stacking, to arrive at different color schemes. This print has had thirteen printings, with twenty-two distinctive colors applied total. The print is shaping up nicely. Six weeks and counting.