There is good news and other news. Good news being the two gum prints I've been working on ended up being finished the same day, even though one of the prints required two more coats than the other. In both images I split the print colors, this time two colors each, applied locally, to enhance and add too the layers beneath, without also affecting an area where such color isn't desired. "Seeing" the culmination of said color stacking is only partially evident during the printing process due to the overall yellow color of the image from the dichromate in the mix.
And that brings us to other news. It has been many years since I printed gums, and forgot a minor detail get by me. Sodium bisulfite. A cheap and easily obtained chemical. It is a 5% solution of sodium bisulfite that is the clearing bath which washes away all the sodium dichromate stain from the print. At that time all the colors become visible, most of which are subtle colors, compared to the world of saturated color images. The structural part of the image came out well, and the detail is good, and will get better once the dichromate stain is gone.
Posting an image of an unfinished gum print or one with dichromate stain would be something akin to blasphemy, and misleading so I won't be posting the gums until they have been cleared and cried. Already I have sat and stared at both images, one at a time of course, thinking of all the variations I could have utilized during the printing stages. There are so many possibilities for printing a gum the permutations of which would be a very vast number. Like how many possible ways to shuffle a deck of cards or number of atoms that make up Earth. Large number. That's why I wait.
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