After two weeks with the printer in the computer shop having a print head installed, with two new ordered print heads both failing, along with a lengthy soaking of the original print head, nothing works. It just isn't going to give up any ink. Without negatives I can't print. So I ordered an Epson Stylus C88+ printer, with the hopeful arrival by week's end. I have little to show for new printed images. What I was able to accomplish in today's print session were three Kallitypes for the Arizona Portfolio. I have posted those images in recent posts, however one print had a printing flaw and the other two were overprinted on the first run. For reference, should anyone be interested, the three prints were; "Miller's Store", "Doc Holliday" and "Main Street Tombstone".
What is new are the two gum prints. Gum printing demands a lot of intuitive skill, along with a good grasp of subtractive color theory. After eight print layers they looked theoretically correct, to what was imagined. That viewing is done with the dichromate stain still very evident. Being mostly color blind to red/green, "seeing" the finished colors through yet another interceding color isn't as easy as it sounds. I discovered this after clearing the prints in a bath of 5% sodium bisulfite. The dichromate yellow disappears, leaving what you thought you had right in front of you.
That happened to turn out a bit off, with the blue layer dominating everything underneath. That means, theoretically, that the underlying yellow layer wasn't dominant enough, and, the blue layer was too heavy with pigment. As I said, gum printing is more intuitive than formulamatic. My word. After thirty years, the intuitive part needs exercising. At this point I am in uncharted territory, being I have never attempted to continue printing on a gum after it has been cleared. That was then. I've decided to continue shifting the color range back to what I had intended for the one image, which is mostly made up of foliage, so I am looking for variations on green. To arrive at that I added a coat of Cadmium Yellow. Thin coat, with a shear yellow. Each print got the same treatment, with different print times.
The print with the foliage got full print time to print into all tonal levels, which it did, shifting the image to the green I was looking for, mostly. Once the print is fully dried and studied under light, I will be looking for the green affect at different tonal levels to see if another shear layer of Magenta might be beneficial. That would shift the primary color slightly to the brownish side for much of the image, depending on the print time. Half to three quarter print time and a bit lengthier float time would keep that magenta influence on the lower tonal range, functionally up to Zone 5.
To keep the issue clear, there is nothing that says one can't continue printing a gum after clearing it in a bisulfite bath. That doesn't alter the image, nor the paper. It merely clears out the dichromate stain. For me, most gum prints need at least six layers to begin adding the details in a photo realistic way, although, that isn't a hard and fast rule. I have printed two color (duo-tone) gums that have turned out quite nicely, looking like a warm black and white print. Although the image was fairly sharp as far as tonal separation was concerned the detail wasn't as evident because I used a thicker color mixture so as to have a solid image after only two layers. It all comes down to understanding the process through practice, until the intuition begins to take over. Then the process isn't difficult at all.
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