April was an exploration of light, more than anything. Indeed, I’ve never paid this much attention to light, shadow, and sunshine before. It was an excellent practice in paying attention, in noticing.
Cyanotype is a form of light exposure, like photo developing. You use chemicals on paper, fabric, or anything that can be coated (I saw someone do rocks and I want to try that!) It requires the interaction of the two chemicals: potassium ferricyanide and ferric ammonium citrate. You only really need to know that you need equal parts of each and to mix them together right before using. I picked up the set from my local art supply store.
For the first half of the month I mixed the chemicals at night, painted the paper, and let them dry in a dark bathroom. Light exposure starts the process of creating the print, hence the windowless bathroom. For the second half of the month I played with wet exposure, meaning you paint the paper with the just mixed chemicals and go straight to the creation of the print. In the end, I couldn’t really tell the difference from the results.
To create the print you place an object on the treated paper and let light do its thing. Where the object is placed and in its shadow the outline remains while the rest of the paper gets exposed. Essentially, you are creating a negative image.
Where things get both exciting and frustrating is with the shadows. Not that sunny? An object with diffuse edges? You get a ‘blurrier’ print. Very sunny? You get shadows. Depending on the time of day and the level of sunniness, you can get very sharp images or long shadows. I found the exploration of these differences fascinating and learned to exploit them to create different things. Seeing as this is morning make and it was April in a northern location, I had a lot of shadows to play with and sometimes not a lot of light. It means I will probably play a bit more in the peak of a summer’s day.
The other act of noticing this month was in looking for things to use to create the print. You see a lot of cyanotype prints exploring shape through living objects like plants and flowers. It was April in Calgary, not a lot of greenery! But weeds, grasses, and last year’s living plants provided fascinating textures to use. Going for walks I found myself nothing plants and sticks in new ways, or even discovering new to me plants. I never picked anything living and cut dead things, leaving roots in tact in case it was a perennial. I also explored the house for objects, using kitchen tools, jewelry, games, even garbage. If it can create a shadow it can create an exposure.
Each day I made 2 prints, so ended up the month with a lot of prints, some definitely better than others. Here are four of my favourites. From top left, in clockwise order. A necklace from Elinor Stenroos on dry. Shadows from slurpee cup and jar lids on dry. Cheerios on wet. Thistle on wet.
Some days I got the real dark, indigo blue colour typically associated with cyanotype, others it was quite pale. To be honest, I never really figured out what created the difference. it always felt like I was putting the same amount of the chemicals on the sheet. I suspect my proportions of the two agents varied, but I don’t really know. Length of exposure varied too, depending on the light conditions that day. I don’t think that effects the colour though, as I exposed almost all to the same colour before washing. (The chemicals look pale green when they go on then change colour as the exposure happens, usually showing done when a bronze or dark green.)
Yes, you can do this on fabric and that probably made a lot of sense for me, a quilter. However, I wanted to try the paper and besides, it’s not like I needed more fabric! That being said, I also don’t need 60, mostly mediocre, cyanotype prints. So I got a notion for a secondary art project.
I need to test my assembly idea for these but if it works, I think it could be pretty cool. And it just might get by the ‘no quilts on the wall’ rule in the house!
At the end of the month I have to say this was a lovely exploration. I admit to being intimidated by the chemicals and the idea of it at the beginning. What foolishness! It is actually really easy, I felt totally safe mixing the agents together, and it was an adventure to see what could happen. Sure, things didn’t always work and I’m still on the low end of the learning curve but it was a low stress experiment. The anticipation each morning of what could happen was a great way to start the day. Pure creative optimism.
PS. I saved a highlight of the process - start to finish - on Instagram.
