Van Dyke Brown - Printing

Printing

Printing with Van Dyke Brown requires the use of a large format negative in the size of the desired print, a suitable substrate for coating and subsequent printing, and a UV light source, either sunlight or suitable bulbs. The substrate can be almost anything that the solution will adhere to. Watercolor paper is a good first choice, but trickier substrates such as metal, glass or tile can be first 'sized' with gelatin or arrowroot to facilitate coating. The substrate is coated with solution under tungsten light, air dried, and coated a second time if desired for a stronger image.

The negative is placed on the thoroughly dried coated substrate, and is then weighted with a piece of glass. Frequent printers often use a printing frame to ease the checking of printing progress without disturbing the registration, or alignment, of the negative on the paper. These printing frames also ease the printing of a second coat over the same image.

The glass-negative-substrate 'sandwich' is exposed to a source of UV light. UV bulbs offer more control and consistency of light than sunlight, but at greatly increased cost. Standard daylight fluorescents produce some UV light, but printing times may be very long. A good starting point for printing time is to check a region of your photo that is very light but should still show some tone or detail (a highlight), and note how long it takes to register this detail, and print as long again. The latent image now appears, although flat and lacking substantial shadow tones.