Emboldened by some success with experiments so far (see
part 1 and
part 2), I got slightly obsessive about making more prints.
The pre-treated cotton muslin was fun to play with, but realistically I was unlikely to use it in a quilt, which is the ultimate goal here, so I put that aside and worked with just my preferred cotton sateen that I had treated with the cyanotype chemicals. The sateen soaks up a lot of product, so there was a lot to react with the moisture during the long exposures.
I also started working a bit larger, using 9 x 12 inch panels and some 16 x 20. For round three I used plume poppy, Japanese anemone, and wood poppy leaves. I also used a bit more moisture, lightly spraying the foam board before laying the fabric on, and spraying again before topping with the glass. I continued to use dilute red dye-na-flow in the first spray, but I'm not certain it made as much of an impact on the sateen as it did on the muslin.
I am still not entirely used to these long exposures. My old normal was 10 - 15 minutes, so 24 hours is a long time to wait! I did have the fun of hovering over them and checking them frequently.
Here's the unrinsed prints after about 24 hours.
They are dark and lovely and mysterious.
It's sort of a shame they can't stay this way, but I have the images to enjoy.
And voila! Here are the finished images. Once again, I was surprised and amazed.
I felt like I was starting to suss out a good working method. The images are still unpredictable, but falling into a sort of pattern.
Time to make more and more!
July 2022 Update: This post has been doing some numbers, so I wanted to say hello, and thank you, to everyone stopping by. I also wanted to let you know that this exploration turned into a series of 78 posts, and counting! You can easily access them, in reverse chronological order, by clicking on the Wet Cyanotype tab in the top header. I share a lot of details about what I've tried, and am always honest about the results in each post. Mixed in is the occasional post showing artquits I've made with my prints. I hope you enjoy reading my blog, learn a thing or two, and try your own hand at this very enjoyable process.
Thanks as always for reading! You can also follow along on your platform of choice:
2 comments:
I see in your notes that you are spraying Dyna a Flo on the pieces. So that is where you are getting some of the color from? I have Dyna flo in about 10 colors.
I think 98% of the color is coming from the chemical reactions in the wet cyanotype process. The dilute dyenaflow *might* be adding a hint of pink. It's worthy of more experimentation--if you try it, report back!
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