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I too have been doing Ziatypes for about 10 years. If you are doing palladium printing, which is what Ziatypes primarily are, you have to be prepared to spend some money. If you keep thinking about how much everything is, you will be inhibited. Start with small prints. My Richeson brush is about 1 1/2 inch wide and cost less than $50. Puddle pushers only work with certain papers. I have used them with COT, (and the late great Cranes) but I mainly use the brush. I feel I'm getting a deeper coating. It's funny, but I have printed in all sorts of humidity conditions from 40% to 70% with no problems. First I coat the paper and let it rest for 2 minutes. Then, in 40% I move quickly, just drying the paper with a fan for about 1 -2 minutes until it feels dry enough to place a negative on it. (I don't use Mylar under the negative.) In more humid conditions I use a hair dryer with the heat turned off or low for about 1 minute. I have found that too much humidity can cause graininess in the print. My gallery has many examples of Ziatypes. I found the kits that Bostick and Sullivan sell, to be a good starting point. I made my first Ziatype in the sun, just for the fun of it, and it was a keeper, and I sold it.
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yep, done some ziatypes...
Found they had a different tonality to a Pd/Pt print - a little bit colder, but more drier if that makes any sense
They are easier in some regards, but I've gone back to NA2 - just me though ;) I'm sure there are people out there that ziatypes will be perfect for
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I have been doing Ziatypes for a few years, and like the others here, have found the process pretty straight forward. One tweak I rather like is the colour range you can get replacing some of the palladium with gold.
At one time I was keen to try the new Chrysotype process developed by Mike Ware, so had some gold solution to hand. But, as I was printing using the Ziatype process at the time I had a go adding gold to the sensitiser solution in place of some of the palladium. With less gold than palladium the prints take on a cool blue colour like the print of the feather.
Whereas adding more gold than palladium starts to produce a deeper blue with reddish tones like the print of the Buddha, much like have been described with chrysotypes. The print of the feather had around 3 drops of 5% gold solution and 4 drops of the palladium solution, the Buddha had 5 drops of gold solution to 3 of the palladium.
