Today was a successful day of printing. The eighth printing begins another split color application, beginning with a base color, followed by two complimentary colors, split by the base color. The Swing is of course a tree, with a swing. I want the tree trunk to be somewhere in the brown(ish) to tan color range, and the foliage to be hues of green, from yellowish green to bluish green. The areas where the sunlight is striking the ground also receives the base color of magenta, as did the tree, mixed this time a bit thinner than the first time. What is needed is to build detail and shift color.
The following two coats will be cadmium yellow, mixed fairly dense, almost to where it no longer fully transparent, and finally cyan, mixed on the thinner side. Just enough to shift yellow to green(ish) tones, depending on the tonal range. The 'split' part of this is simply the two primary colors I will end up with; brown(ish) [tree and sunlit ground] and green(ish) on the foliage. Even considering this split color printing, this will be a 'straight' print. That is, nothing added that takes away from the image. However, there are plans for changing that up, trying out some ideas on gum dichromate "Impressionism". Thinking about that has been quite titillating, with the many possibilities.
I have also begun a sizing test, altering the standard way I've been doing it to something that should, theoretically, be very close to the same outcome. I've been sizing using a double coating of gelatin sizing at 2 1/3%. I just sized two fresh sheets of Arches in a 5% gelatin solution. As I said, theoretically it should end up with about the same sizing depth for the gum to attach to, onto the 'tooth' of the paper. Should it turn out to my liking, it means one less step to deal with heating gelatin water to 115 degrees. It is always good to test procedures and practices to weed out useful portions of any process, and superstitious behavior; doing it because that's always the way you did it.
New print soon. My apologies for the dead space in between.
