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If there is a moral to this story, I have no idea what it is...yet

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Linen Over Lace This summer will mark six years for me working with the gumoil process. It has been an interesting journey with experiences that were both good and bad. Most people who have come to me looking for help seem to want to believe that once they have been taught the steps for making a print that they will find quick success. That just doesn’t happen with a process like gumoil. There are too many learned subtleties that take time to thoroughly understand. Through the increased interest in gumoil printing, certainly fueled by the beautiful prints made by Anna Ostanina, I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with quite a few truly decent people with engaging stories of their own. There have also been the occasional odd ones and even a couple of truly bad ones, but overall, my experiences dealing with people over the internet because of the gumoil process have been overwhelmingly positive.   One thing I have found talking with people who are new to the process is ...

Mulling Safflower and Poppy Oil Paint

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The US distributor of my favorite safflower and poppy oil lamp black paint for printing with gumoil is moving its warehouse to New England, and that means that this paint is not currently available in any of the online shops that I buy it from. So, I have no alternative but to mull (mix) some of my own right now. I started doing this a while back, but since Maimeri makes a great version of this paint already, I've been quite happy just buying in a tube, all ready to go. Mulling paint is fun, but it's a lot of work, it's messy, and you should always wear protective gear, including a full face respirator mask, because some powdered pigments are highly toxic.  Here is a YouTube video I made (with help from my husband) of what it takes to mull paint. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJFlTwJzyao

Gumoil 2.0

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9x17 inches, Arches Platine, 1:3 plus 30% dist. water gum solution, ("green" curve and transparency) (Since I work in several different mediums, I am planning on shifting most of my work with gumoil to a blog devoted entirely to that process. the new blog is called  The Gumoil Blog .) (This gumoil tutorial is an update to the previous one and has new information regarding gum bichromate solutions and transparency types and the custom curves I’ve made for myself for them. I have cut out some of the extraneous blog talk in an effort to be clearer and more concise.) I first heard about the gumoil process in July of 2013. I was introduced to it during an advanced alternative processes workshop led by my friend and go-to mentor for all things alt pro, Christopher James. C hristopher asked Cotton Miller, his assistant for the workshop, to do a quick gumoil demonstration because he had become quite familiar with this elusive process while using it for some of his...