Experiments in wet cyanotype - part 74

 

After a long, wet, and dreary winter and early spring, the weather finally turned and I had the motivation and the time to do a few wet cyanotype prints. (I clocked a lot of time during the dreary days at the machine, stitching on new quilts, with results to follow later.)

A quick tour around the garden and woods turned up some vibrant burdock leaves, a sprig of bleeding heart leaves, and a fresh fern frond. I set these up with the mixture of cyanotype chemicals, plus a small squirt of Solarfast solar dye, on mineral paper, my current favorite non-fabric substrate.

Out they went into the bright spring sunlight. I also prepped a cotton sateen panel with more bleeding heart leaves and a Kousa dogwood twig. None of this was carefully thought through, I just wanted get back into practice at summoning up that old wet cyan magic.

After exposure but before rinsing, it was looking like I still had the touch. There's so much going on with the burdock leaves!

Along with lots of cool swirly stuff with the bleeding heart and fern.

In the fabric print, you can see hints of the red Solarfast.

And here are the finished prints. 

Mineral paper is such an interesting product.  Made with rock derived calcium carbonate and a small amount of binder, it is smooth and water resistant, so at first the cyanotype chemicals swirl all around. but at some point, while baking in the hot sun, they begin to adhere to the paper, with the leaves providing an imperfect resist. I can only partially control the process, which is why I find it endlessly fascinating.

I am also pleased with the print on cotton sateen, there's lots of subtle circular patterning and crisp leaf edges. All together it's a good start to the printmaking season.

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