"Discovery" ~ Gum over Palladium

This gum over palladium print nearly completes the portfolio on people that I intend to print. There will be ten prints in that portfolio. The second portfolio has of course already begun with the two prints I've posted in the past weeks. I have caught an error in some of my postings that is regrettable. When listing the conditions of a print, in the form of developer used, paper and the like, it is important to get things right. I believe in some of the posts on gum over palladium prints I listed the paper as Revere Platinum. If I did that it should have been Hahnemühle Paper. All my gum over printing is done on Hahnemühle paper.

I didn't photograph each layer of this gum simply because I have been doing so for a number of gum over print images to demonstrate "technique", over "process". Process is the framework for how things work, technique is how all the variables of that process can be manipulated to end up with a print image that was pre-visualized and intended throughout the printing, arriving at the printer's version of how they wanted the scene should look. In gum printing, those variations are limitless. Gum printing is the most versatile and personal of all the photographic printing processes. No other medium process allows the variety of directions a printer can take, with the only 'ending', simply knowing to when to stop.

As all the other gum over prints, this one  is printed on Hahnemühle paper, pre-shrunk. There are six print layers of gum over the base palladium print. Several were split color runs, mostly to emphasize a color or separate it from another. I also altered the color palate somewhat, using colors I have never used, in color ranges I can't full see. An example of that is the boy's jumpsuit. My normal inclination would have been to use blue, as in denim, as I've done in the past, where it fit the setting. I wanted to do something different here. I shifted to earth tones using burnt sienna as the base color for the boy's jumpsuit, instead of phthalo blue. I also had to emphasize the values of the larger goose to separate it from the surroundings which were of the same tonal value. Here, the normal tonal separation of black and white differs. The tones here, blend. Several layers of earth toned colors to enhance the goose it began to separate from the greenery surrounding it.

The focal point of the image is the connection between the boy and the goose. That was my intent upon setting out, using colors I mostly can't actually see. As always, another really fine adventure in printing. Gum printing utilizes subtractive color theory, exactly the same as used in watercolor painting. Being my wife is an excellent watercolor artist I learned a number of subtle things about that subject and have been applying them in my printing.

Gum over Palladium ~ six gum print layers, six colors
Hahnemühle paper (pre-shrunk) ~ Sodium Citrate developer
"Discovery" ~ 8x10 ~ Unique
Geneva, Illinois ~ 2016