Now we've got all the inkjet myth nonsense and its alleged pigments. Well, every painter with an ounce of training knows that even if these were in fact totally pigment based (which they're not), not all pigments are created equal, no by a long shot. If you want truly permanent colorants, fly to the surface of Mars and collect the ones already UV-proven. Of course, you'll be limited to a rather limited palette of oxides, and probably none of those will fit through tiny inkjet nozzles. Those kind of oxides barely fit through house paint colorant machine nozzles. But if we can't rely on any photographic colorants lasting forever, we can take solace in the fact that at least one thing will remain - the mythology itself, and probably associated deceptive marketing too.
Drew
I have moved my complete personal printing colour and black and white to Pt Pd with gum bichromate tones on top - to full colour gum bichromate over palladium using The Wet Print pigments that are considered quite LF with a Blue Wool Scale of 8. I also do inkjet prints for contemporary art projects.
Attachment 225057 - this is the brand new Cone Editions LED unit, we retrofitted it above our 33x 44 inch vacuum press. It has brought our exposures on large gums which are shown below from 25 min to 1.2 min.
Attachment 225058- This is Michelle Huisiman from Vancouver Canada, working in my dim room last month and that is a tri colour gum over Palladium, and as you can see she is getting pretty damm good results
For my personal work I also do tri colours over pd and also a lot of multiple negative tonal shifts over palladium.
Attachment 225059
We are very interested in any and all research in pigment structure and its Light Fastness, Colour Fidelity, light transmission capabilities ( I have been going down this wormhole for over 10 years and have been lucky enough to meet some very good mentors along the way like Sandy King, Ron Reeder . I can tell you that our working solutions (coating solution) would never make it through any printing heads that I am aware of but I do believe some very interesting methods of spray heads tied into flat bed tables will be incorporated in the coming future, as well a lot of research into various pigments, like earth colours, and even Drew space colours.
We are now looking at UV printers that allow us to print on any surface, I am quite interested in a few of the possibilities .. for example
-copper plates where we can print our images in register and take these plates off the printer and etch them for single and multiple colour
-Currently we use Epson printer to make single separation negatives that we then have to take to a stripping table and join together for multiple colour work. (PIA)
These units can be adapted with registration bars and using their sophisticated xy positioning one can make a set of 4 films already pre punched. ( YA )
- Ink jet prints on any type of material that allow the UV radiation to harden the surface , so that its scratch resistant with protective UV coatings. This will be of interest
to some of my clients that do extremely large prints to avoid glazing and mounting a substrate to diabond for example. In a museum or large gallery presentation this amounts to
over 700 $ per image which when added up in a 30 print showing is quite astounding amount of savings.
These units can be adapted with bright minds over the next few years to be able to do multiple coat , registered coatings for almost any application, and I hope to see the day where I am using
the best ground stone with simple process.
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