"The Vicar's Window" ~ Finished Print

I'm feeling pretty good about this print, arriving at the previsualized image I had of this setting. I was hoping to convey the darker natural lighting of the historical room as it was when I observed it. The textural quality of the setting, the adobe walls with late afternoon lighting comes off to me as a sort of deep yellowish color, so very much like Yellow Ochre, to my eye. That is the pigment I used for this print, in varying depths of the three mixed layers used. The reflected light off the wooden shutters, and adobe walls absorb the color layers differently, due to tonal range, as does the window glass from the stairs below. Each tonal range is affected by, and reflects color slightly differently. The darker areas (thinnest negative densities) absorb color first, and keep it the most, yet show it the least. As the tonal range increases, so does the visual visual effect of the color layers, with the tonal ranges between zone 3 and zone 6 showing the colors the most. The more reflective the elements of the scene will show color the most.

As any gum print, or gum over an existing print, the ways of shaping the outcome are literally limitless. A natural urge for me is printing this image a few more times to find that one avenue that stands above the rest. It is also an urge I stifle. The element I had been watching for color shifts was the window glass. That is where the light is coming through. One might expect that light to be yellow, as reflected off interior walls. However, keep in mind afternoon sunlight is bright, and capturing said light as 'yellow(ish)' in the glass would make the larger scene unnatural, phony. The end result being that this print image is as close to my visual experience of the scene when I captured it.

Comparing this image to the previous one in the last post will have quite a visual impact for the viewer, having first seen the very colored (yellowish) image to this final one. That yellow seen is the yellow dichromate stain that gets cleared when the print is finally done. As an FYI, should the printer decided that after clearing, the image just simply doesn't look 'finished', nothing says the print can't be dried like it would be between printings, and more color layers added as desired. I will confess that I personally like the more deliberate ambient yellow color of the pre-cleared image. I love really warm toned scenes. Always have, yet I am more inclined to work towards the more natural lighting of a scene as experienced, more than wanting to alter that to something else. I certainly find nothing wrong with that approach, for those more inclined to actually see the colors they are working with. Hence, the window glass is mostly the white light entering the room, although the color begins to show as reflected light off textured surfaces, which is how light leaves color.

Gum over Palladium
"The Vicar's Window" ~ 8x10 ~ Unique