post alternative techniques

[Jim Fitzgerald]

How about one more for now? This is the second floor and the details here are amazing.

[sanking]

1907 church, Los Angeles

Jim,

Very nice work.

Sandy

[Jim Fitzgerald]

Sandy, thanks. That means a lot.

[banana_legs]

Jay,

David has given a spot-on answer in his previous post; start with the dry powder and add a small quantity of liquid at a time; I use a mortar and pestle and you just have to remember to add small amounts of the 'thinner liquid' to the thicker one, whatever you are mixing.

David, just to add a little non-carbon balance; I also use the home-ground pigments in gum printing. The methods are slightly different though in that I use gum arabic as a binder for the pigment for use in gum printing, and I just use a little of the warm glop as a binder for carbon. I have been experimenting with some old recipes for binder/glop as much of my pigment has a significant quantity of oil in it which can cause problems with modern glop recipes. Ironically oily pigment seems to be a requisite of some of the old methods, but I am still experimenting.

For both the gum and carbon, I have been exploring coarse pigments to see how much 'texture' I can add to a print. Yes there is a degree of speckling, more in gum than in carbon. In gum the coarse pigment creates what many would call an 'artistic' effect and I find mixing a base of very finely ground pigment with a small percentage of coarse particles tends to stop the image becoming too overwhelmed. With carbon though, the coarse particles sink when pouring the tissue with only fine particles being suspended nearer to the surface, creating a non-linear gradient of pigment density through the tissue. The result is that often the highlights are nice and detailed with minimal speckling, yet the shadows capture much of the coarse pigment and feel very rough to the touch.

Best regards,

Evan

[sly]

I've been playing a bit with the carbon tissue I brought home from Vaughn's workshop. Here are my 2 best to date.

The one of the bones on the beach has frilled everytime I've printed it.
The sandstone has only frilled once, they were both printed on the same tissue, exposed for the same length of time, with a saftey border, under glass for more than an hour. I've got cold packs to keep the tranfer water cold. The first time I thought I'd maybe taken too long in the transfer bath, but then I started paying very close attention to the time. It still frilled. Any suggestions?

The streaks visible in rebate of the sandstone - I'm assuming I didn't get the sensitizer evenly distributed?

I also had 2 that pulled away from the support in chunks when separated. They were the last 2 of the day. It had been 10-12 hours since they'd been sensitized. Is that a probable cause? I thought overlong times since sensitizing led to dark reaction?

Thanks for any help as I get started with carbon

[Jay DeFehr]

Thanks, Evan. I'll give it a try. There is certainly a lot of room for experimentation in carbon printing.

[Jay DeFehr]

Sly,

Very nice! I suspect you're right about the dark reaction causing the peel-away. I don't know about the frilling. Could it be related to the mating during the transfer? Enough weight on the mated pair? I assume you're leaving them to mate for 1/2 hour, or more? Are you drying the back and edges of the tissue, etc.? I'm sure you're doing everything correctly, I'm just wondering aloud, so to speak. I remember those negatives, and it's great to see them printed. I hope you're having fun!

[John Jarosz]

The edge should be masked off so it doesn't receive any UV light. You can use red litho tape or a paper mask. I tape all my carbon negs. After development the borders should be white - the frilling will be severely reduced, especially as you make larger prints.

Nice images. Congrats on doing carbon.

[mdm]

7.3X10 inches on Canson Montval

[Tri Tran]

My new carbon work.Purple rain , Purple Print.