Doubling up

More experimenting with film positives today. The first trials revealed that the darker ink jet positive rendered more detail & a deeper bite to the Solarplate. What if I printed out two exact images on my laser printer and overlapped them?

Two laser prints on DuraLar film.

After carefully lining them up and weighting them down, I taped the positives together.

Print Frog holding film positives together for taping.

I exposed the Solarplate to the doubled up film positive using the same settings as yesterday. After processing it looked promising.
 

Exposed Solarplate.

As I carded the ink onto the plate, I could feel quite a bit of drag due to the surface texture.

I ended up with a very dark proof and much of the subtle detail was missing. Quite disappointing. I probably should have increased the exposure time since the darks were much stronger with the double positives.

Even though I overlapped the two films very carefully, the final proof had a bit of a foggy look; it the lacked crispness that was in my earlier experiments. 

Since I'm now out of Solarplates, that puts and end to my experimenting. In a couple of weeks, I'll order more Solarplates, a few Toyobo plates and some oil based inks to do a few more tests.

It was worth giving the double positives a try. I'm sure I'll eventually hit upon the perfect combination of variables.