Gum Over Palladium ~ Layer 2 ~ "The fiddlers"

One of the givens of gum over printing is simply that once another layer has been applied the printer no longer really has a means of visually 'seeing' that past layer, only the updated version. That is why I have been taking the time and pains to copy each layer as they are printed, and hopefully faithfully replicating the image to post. *Repeat ~ I am pretty much color blind to red/green. I have learned to discern the difference between the two in a print primarily by 'warm tone' 'cool tone' reference. I print gum colors using subtractive color theory. Theoretically.

That doesn't always return what I was after, theoretically. Every new print teaches me something about the process, and the intuitive senses begin to take over; "hand". That is the visually recognizable work of any photographer or artist, or even musician. It only takes three notes for me to recognize a Pink Floyd piece, or Carlos Santana on guitar. The "hand" of a fine printer working with a good silver gelatin paper is going to be less noticeable than the hand of a hand coated process, and even more so when working with very unique processes like gum. A fine printer of silver gel images would be all but indistinguishable from Ansel Adams' printing. Using the same commercial papers and printing a full scaled print is not all that separate. Gum printing is like oil painting. There is no 'right way' to do it. Only styles and techniques, and that leads us back to "hand".

Looking back over the past ten or so gum prints I have made over the past year, I can see a progression to the printing. A more subtle way of applying the gum, in better combinations, more aligned to the needs of the image than to conventional notions of mixing and applying gum colors. I have always used the CYMK coloring theme, even though I use the one b&w negative. I learned two things. First, the negatives I would use to make a palladium print, far exceeds the density range needed for a gum over print. And secondly, there is no order nor prearranged color arrangement expected. There is only 'affect' upon the scene, focused around the light of the scene. That is, the color(s) chosen for the scene can be any desired, and, mixed together to make even more colors and tones. Makes a printer think in painterly terms of color, not in terms of application, but in color theory and the color wheel, then flip that into subtractive color theory.

This Print layer was split into two parts; Ultramarine Blue (very sheer) and Pthalo Blue (mixed sheer) and applied to two areas. The Ultramarine Blue went to the foliage in the background and top of the rose bush behind the seated boy, down to the beginning of the lighter grass area. That lighter grass area got a very sheer mixture of Pthalo Blue, with just a touch more dichromate for sensitivity, and thinness. The background foliage prints down first, thus permanent by the time the grass area has begun printing down. I printed to 12 min this layer. The palladium print was 10 minutes, the first Ochre coat was 15 minutes, to print to the zone 7 area, give it some detail color.

Compared to the last print layer of Yellow Ochre, the print doesn't have that overall Yellow look, and I can detect that the rose bush isn't yellow any longer, which indicates that the blue over layer shifted it to a green(ish) color, different from the grasses. What has to be imagined is the elimination of the yellow dichromate stain. Try doing that when you don't actually see the colors. Theoretically, what I will end up with is a subtle green(ish) background and partially in the grasses, with a late afternoon sunlight on the players. There will be a very sheer layer of Raw Umber printed over parts of the players' clothes (hat, bows) and violins, to shift away from yellowish to closer to their attire. A final layer of quinacridone gold will be the 'golden glow' of the late afternoon sunshine.

Gum over Palladium ~ Layer 2 ~ Ultramarine Blue/Pthalo Blue
"The Fiddlers"