Experiments in wet cyanotype - part 38

 I'm a bit short on both time and materials at the moment, but the allure of the bleeding heart in bloom was impossible to resist, so I fit in a few new wet cyanotype prints. The first is 16" x 20", and the second is 10" x 12", both on cotton sateen. These are standard sizes for  me, as they match the glass I have on hand, and are a good size for components for my art quilts.

 I also did a print of the pink dogwood in bloom, because how could I not?

 As I've said before, timing the exposure for delicate flowers is a delicate thing. I want enough sun and heat to work that old wet cyan magic, but no so much that it burns out and overexposes the delicate blossoms.

 For these it meant moving them back and forth between sun and shade a few times until I deemend them done. Total exposure was about 3 hours, in 72F weather. These exposed, unrinsed prints are already looking good.

 I wasn't as worried about the dogwood exposure, because the sepals (the part we think of as the flowers) is fairly thick and tough. However, that same thickness meant it didn't have consistent contact with the fabric, despite using my heaviest pane of glass. In retrospect, it would have benefited from being pressed briefly before setup.

 Here are the finished prints. Both bleeding heart prints turned out just delightful.

 There's lots of good detail, with the just the right amount, to my taste, of wet cyan weirdness.

 I first I was a bit dismayed by the dogwood, it has elements of the dreaded blobiness because of the imperfect contact. But it's growing on me; with the right amount of stitching to delineate the shapes, and maybe some beadwork for the centers of the sepals, and some pebble stitching on the background, I think it could be lovely. So it's going in the "someday" pile and not the "cutter" pile.

I don't do things by the numbers, generally, but it didn't escape my attention that with this post I've exceeded 600 photos of wet cyan works in progress, spread out over 38 blog posts. If you've got a lot of curiosity and some time on your hands, you can read the whole epic saga, in reverse chronological order, by clicking on the wet cyanotype tab at the top, or going here.

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