From the PA Burlesque Festival, June 30th: Donna Touch. Selenium-toned kallitype on Arches 140# HP.

Continuing down the selenium road: this is about 20 minutes of selenium toning, after having pre-fixed for 2 minutes. It’s a touch more brown than I wanted, but it’s in the ballpark.

There’s also some slight streaking evident in the print once you get up close to it. Each of these sheets of paper were coated with fumed silica (Aerosil 380, to be precise) before printing. This fumed silica is hydrophillic, meaning it will soak up water like nobody’s business. As a result the page will accept more sensitizer, and will yield a greater density of blacks.

With Stonehenge paper, or with Herschel (my favorite, hand-made in France), the fumed silica (whose particulate size is smaller than cigarette smoke particles) easily adheres to the face of the paper, soaking up sensitizer and turning in to beautiful, even prints. On this hot-pressed paper, the fumed silica sat on the page too thick with nothing to adhere to, apparently – while applying the sensitizer, the fumed silica had a tendency to pull off the page and streak.

This print was made earlier than the one I posted yesterday, before I decided how to approach the streaking (which I don’t find unpleasant in this particular print). I eventually settled on using a wide brush to quickly brush off the excess before coating, leaving significantly less fumed silica on the page. There still appears to be some increase in dmax, without streaking.