This past weekend of September 12 and 13 Art Intersection was bursting with color! Tri-color gum bichromate, that is. We had the great pleasure of hosting a two-day, immersive workshop in the process taught by Diana Bloomfield, a master gum printer especially known for her tri-color technique. Ten participants learned about this fascinating 19th-century process that includes mixing together gum arabic, potassium dichromate, and watercolor pigments, then hand-coating that mixture on paper, exposing their paper under a digital negative in UV light, and washing out the print in water to “develop” it.
Diana Bloomfield explains her technique for mixing the gum emulsion on Day 1.
Workshop participants look on as Diana coats a sheet of paper with the light-sensitive gum mixture she’s made.
Any color watercolor pigment can be used, but this tri-color process involves making three separate coating and exposure runs with cyan, magenta, and yellow pigments individually to get a full-color final print.
Armed with coffee, the participants listen as Diana explains the basics of color balancing for a natural-looking print at the start of Day 2. If a print does not initially look correct, more passes with various colors can be made to balance it.
In order for the image to remain sharp, the negative being used must be placed in exactly the same spot for every layer. Michael Puff carefully registers his negative to exactly match the previous layers he’s created.
Chris Palmer rinses out his print after exposing it to UV light. During the exposure, the areas of the gum emulsion blocked by the dark areas of the negative wash away in the water, creating highlights. Those underneath the light areas of the negative solidify and adhere to the paper, creating shadows.
BK Skaggs, Shari Trennert, and Maylee Noah rinse their prints while others hang to dry. These prints show the first pass with the cyan layer.
At the end of the workshop, all the participants show the results of their hard work by putting their favorite prints up on the critique board. Diana gives the class constructive feedback on their printing.
Finished prints by Maylee Noah showing one-color, two-color, and tri-color prints.
Starting Friday evening and working through Sunday, the workshop students learned about creating digital negatives for platinum/palladium, chemistry, and then made prints in the alt process lab.
Keith shared his expertise with the class and showed the process he uses to make palladium and platinum prints. You may remember Keith’s work on exhibit in the North Gallery along with Dick Arentz this past January and February during the Art Intersection Platinum/Palladium exhibition.
Checking the first digital negatives for densities and checking exposure times.
Keith concentrating on building and explaining digital negatives and Quad Tone RIP.
Discussing paper choices.
Ready to print.
Coating Arches Platine with a glass rod.
Time to expose.
High tech or low tech, it’s all about UV light.
Pouring on the developer.
Trying the cold tone developer.
Clearing.
In the final wash.
Final prints drying before going to the critique wall.
Some of the dry prints on the critique wall. Others were still too wet to show by the end of the workshop.
Have you ever wanted an enlarged negative for your alternative photographic process art? Does the process to create a digital negative adjustment curve sound too complicated? If you answered yes, then join us for a presentation on creating a digital negative curve. As my kids said when they needed help with their homework, just give me the answer without all the boring technical stuff.
This lecture illustrates creating a Photoshop curve to adjust a digital camera image to make a digital negative suitable for contact printing a gelatin silver (black and white) print. This same process can be followed for any alternative photographic processes that use a negative.
Art Intersection will create curves in advance of our alternative process workshops and make these available to the students. Now, before our workshops, you can use our digital lab to make digital negatives from your digital cameras (yes, even from your phone’s camera) or scanned films.
A group of South Mountain High School intermediate and advanced students, along with their teachers, Vivian Spiegelman and Dena Cervantes, came to Art Intersection to participate in a three-session workshop experience. In the workshop the students looked at and discussed contemporary portraiture, learned to use a 4 x 5 camera, created digital negatives from digital files and print them in the Van Dyke 19th century printing process.
They produced some beautiful self-portraits and went back to school with a deeper understanding of the art of photography.
If you, your institution, or group are interested in learning more about how we can customize a photographic experience for you contact us.
