Sue Reno Studio: Experiments in wet cyanotype

August 21, 2021

Experiments in wet cyanotype - part 68

I'm continuing to have a great time experimenting with mineral paper. It behaves very differently than fabric when printing with the wet cyanotype process, so it keeps me on my toes.

For this batch I was working with the usual cyanotype chemicals, with an added glug of solarfast solar dye chemicals.

The plants used are bleeding heart leaves and wood poppy leaves.

I used a long exposure, about 20 hours, starting on a hot and sultry day, then catching the morning sun as well.

This first set of pictures is of the prints just before exposure. You can see how the chemicals want to slither around on the slick surface of the paper.

A long exposure gives the chemicals time to get a grip and bond on the paper, although as with all things wet cyan success is not always a given.

Here are the prints after exposure but before rinsing. There is a lot going on here!

Some of this loveliness will stay, but a certain amount of it will rinse away. I like to take pictures so I have images of this funky intermediate stage.

Here are the finished prints.

It's an especially intricate and delicate batch.

Both of these plants are early spring bloomers, with leaves that tend to fade away in the punishing heat of mid-summer. I feel like I really captured their essence with these prints.

That little bit of pink is from the Solarfast, or at least I think it is. The rusty colors can happen with wet cyan alone.

There's several where the liquid rushed off to one part of the paper and established a sort of dam, with a defined line. I have no control over that part of it.