Pencil marks now in Pt/Pd?

[John Sarsgard]

I've never bothered to mask off the brush marks on platinum prints, but thought I'd print a few that way to see if portrait clients might like them better, or at least have a choice. My masking worked just fine, and the brush strokes don't show, but the little pencil lines I use to guide the brushing won't erase! A mark from the same pencil applied on the dry print erases easily. First thought was that Pt and/or Pd had combined with the lead in the pencil. The brush strokes cleared just fine. Ideas? What's a better way? The faint pencil marks are pretty ugly.

 

[Jorge]

If you drew the lines, coated over them and processed the print, you are stuck with the pencil marks. The only way to do away with the brush strokes is to mask the negative at the time you print with an UV opaque material. I use rubylith which you can find at any graphics store.

 

[donbga]

The brush strokes cleared just fine. Ideas? What's a better way? The faint pencil marks are pretty ugly.

John,

Don't mark the print with anything, at least on the print face. Just learn to coat the paper without them.

Don Bryant

 

[John Sarsgard]

I did mask the print....

What puzzles me is that I did mask the brush strokes....which worked. You don't see the brush strokes, just the unerasable (is that a word?) pencil marks.

 

[Jorge]

Of course you do not see the brush strokes, those have been developed and removed by the clearing, all you got left is the pencil marks. Most books about pt/pd will tell you that once you marked and coated the pencil guides you will be left with indelible marks....it is a fact of pt/pd life...

 

[Michael Mutmansky]

As Jorge says, pencil marks that have been put into water will be permanent.

There are a few things you can do to help this situation. The first is do not put any marks on the paper. Depending on the paper you use, you may be able to make a template of a piece of paper the same size as the paper you print on, and a piece of black construction paper the size you would like the masked area to be. Then, you lay the paper you will be printing on top, and use the black box visible through the paper to guide the location of the coating, etc.

The other way it to only put a pencil point on the paper, not a line. That way, if it is visible, it will be very insubstantial, and if light enough, may not be noticeable at all.

I don't mark the paper at all. I use a piece of matboard cut to size as a form that I measure and set on the paper in the correct location. Then, I mask around the edges of the matboard with a low-tack masking tape. Finally, I pull off the matboard, make sure the edges of the tape are down with a boning tool, and coat the paper.

Once coating is done, the masking tape is removed, and the paper is ready for exposure. No marks, and no extraneous pt/pd solution to worry about fogging or incomplete clearing.


---Michael