Right Hand Man

There really is an underlying photographic image here, honest!

It was printed on Ilford Multigrade paper and "developed" using Kodak Dektol paper developer and it's part of a series I've been working on over the last few months. In a few of them, and tis is one of those, I decided to add some color using acrylic paints. I need to do some more experimentation with the paint aspect. I use some bright colors here, and I love the way the finger tips and base areaof the thumb came out, but the fuscia just doesn't work.

I dipped my hand partway into a tray of Dektol, shook the excess off onto the paper, and then pressed my hand down firmly onto the paper, which was supported by a sheet of heavy plexiglass. My hand stayed there for a bit over five minutes. In the meantime the scattered drops of developer just sat there with no agitation so the developer loaded up with bromide, then I tilted the paper in various directions to allow the bromide loaded developer to run across the prints surface. It was all that bromide that left the grey streaks. I made a few more prints using the same technique but I wanted to get the opinions of a few other people before I went hog wild. So far they've been well received at a couple of gallery shows, but they didn't include any prints that were painted.