There were a few sunny and warm days in March where I had the impetus to do some botanical printing. I pulled out my collection of autumn leaves I had pressed for just such an occasion and fiddled around with their layout. I am using my favorite cloth, a medium weight cotton sateen.
Once I decided on the arrangement, I removed the leaves and treated the fabric with a combination of cyanotype chemicals in the center, and Jacquard Solarfast around the edges. I then added the leaves back on and pressed them down firmly. I covered the arrangement with some sheet plastic (I don't have any glass this large) and set them in the sun for a nice long exposure. I no longer worry about the crease lines in the plastic, as it adds another layer of design.
Over the course of several days I did two more panels, with slightly different arrangements of leaves.
Pressed leaves lose their integrity after a while, so I was invested in using them all up as creatively as I could.
The colors of the chemicals change dramatically after exposure.
Here are the three panels after exposure, but before rinse out. The areas where the leaves acted as resists, that have some lovely green and blue tones, will mostly rinse out.
This phase is very fleeting, so I enjoy capturing these images.
Here are the finished prints! I am very happy with how they turned out.
They are up on my design wall now, where I can enjoy them and contemplate my next move.
I am very fortunate to be in a place where I can putter about like this right now. I hope everyone is sheltering as safely as possible.
I've been working with cyanotype since 2002, and with the wet cyanotype process since the summer of 2017. All the wet cyan posts, of which this is number 48, where I document my experiments in detail, are available in reverse chronological order by clicking the "Wet Cyanotype" tab in the header bar, or by going here.
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1 comment:
Your results are always wonderful...I too love seeing the work before the rinse cycle!!! But these are still fantastic!!! I have Solar Fast and had really good results with it. I don't have any Cyano type ingredients...but do have some pretreated fabric! It's 48 degrees here with the sun!!! So not great weather yet for sun printing!!! I about froze just walking the dogs! HA Too windy as well!
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