Final Gum Print from Old Portfolio

One more gum print from the old portfolio, the last print I made at that time, circa 1987. This one was printed as all the others, using a paper negative. I found the RC coated stock to be the best for negative use, being the prints didn't wrinkle, with the image surface very smooth with the gloss coating. The pre-cut 5x7 sheets also made loading the sheets into the cut film holders easily. Standard grade-2 paper came out to be approximately ASA 6. Now that would be ISO 6, but same difference. I also used an inexpensive enlarging lens fitted to the lens board as I couldn't afford a lens with a shutter for a format camera at that time. I just needed to shoot at around 3-6 seconds to pull off a refitted chemical jar lid working as a lens cap. Things worked swimmingly. I got excellent images that would contact print beautifully on another sheet of silver gelatin paper, or for gum dichromate printing, which is mostly what I used the negatives for.

Gum prints can be printed using any standard negative made for projection enlargement. The contrast index or density range, would be somewhere between 5.5 and 7.5 to accommodate for a condenser head or cold light head projection light. The denser negatives for the cold light head. The denser negatives would also be well served in the gum process, for better tonal separation and increased texture and detail. Even with numerous coats on a print, if the density range isn't long enough, the colors register from each layer, yet it remains extremely difficult to arrive at sufficient tonal separation to truly show details and textures on things.

Below is the last gum print I made in the eighties It was made using a paper negative shot in a Burke & James 5"x7" wooden flatbed view camera, using Kodak grade-2 coated RC paper; 5x7 pre-cut. the image is thirteen layers of color coatings using watercolors suspended in the gum Arabic. The sensitizer used was potassium dichromate; saturated solution 13%;
This image is from a digital camera shooting the original print. The downside is you will also be seeing the paper texture against the image. I will be reprinting this image to 8x10, perhaps larger after that, but I will be using a digital negative this time around, and the differences will the striking.

Gum Dichromate; "A Quiet Pond" ~ 1987 ~ 5"x7"Unique