Topic: My first cyanotype

[Pete_R]

I bought one of the Fotospeed kits to have a go at cyanotype printing. This is the very first one I did. Pity the paper has got some marks on it. The second one I did had identical marks, though not as bad, so this was something on the paper.

I'm not very impressed by the Fotospeed kit. Two sheets of the OHP printing acetate were marked and two sheets of the printing paper had these marks on them. And the 'glass' rods they supply aren't glass and can bend slightly but seem OK if you go gentle with them. The kit also seems expensive considering what you get (?33 from Speed Graphic).

Can anyone recommend a paper to use and an OHP acetate to make large format negs with? And what do others use to coat the paper with - brushes or rods or something else? I'm definitely going to do some more but I'll need to get some more paper and acetates first - the kit only contains five of each.

[rdbkorn]

Peter, you have a lovely range of tones in that cyanotype. Pity about the imperfections in the paper.

I use a hake brush for applying my cyanotype chemicals to paper. I've used good quality watercolour and printmaking paper - e.g. Arches hot pressed watercolour paper, BFK Rives printmaking paper, Rising Stonehenge white printmaking paper have all worked well for me. I've also printed cyanotypes on Japanese paper and x-ray film that had been exposed and processed before having the cyanotype applied.

The usual recommendation for OHP material is Pictorico which works quite well. For a large project I did for a gallery show last year, I needed something more economical and used Graphix Inkjet Vellum to producing negatives, which worked well. It's a translucent material, so exposures were slightly increased. You can see images from the show at http://www.paulromaniuk.ca.

Paul

[Heather]

I buy my chemicals from Silverprint (you can buy a lot of ammonium ferric citrate green and potassium ferricyanide for the price of the fotospeed kit).
I use a hake brush (the nicer ones made by Daler Rowney, not what Silverprint have).
I use APHS Ortho Litho film (bought from Freestyle Photo in the US. even with shipping and possible duty/VAT, it's cheaper than buying ortho sheet film in the UK ) for my enlarged negatives (analog so no help to you there). They retail at 15GBP but occasionally art stores will have them for half price for some reason... I paid more than that for mine but I've bought a few spares when I find them for 6GBP.

I'm going through a hell of a lot of papers... I can't get Arches to work for me... nor the mythical Buxton paper. BFK Rives does work as mentioned previously. Atlantis Silversafe works but it's freaky and like tissue paper (and is also being discontinued as I saw when I went to Atlantis Art itself).  Fabriano Watercolor Studio used to work for me but more recent packs don't   Plain ol' Bockingford watercolour paper seems to work for me too if you want something fairly cheap to practice on which is available in smaller precut amounts - it's a real hassle cutting down those huge sheets of BFK Rives.

[Pete_R]

Paul, Heather,

Thanks both for the info. I'll start searching for some suppliers.

Heather,

What's your definition of not working for you in respect of the different papers? In what way don't they work? Also, any recommendations on paper suppliers, especially the Bockingford as that sounds like a good thing to start with?

Thanks

[Heather]

"Not working" tends to mean the paper is to alkaline - too buffered too acid-free. This leads to longer exposure times and poor quality prints. I found this after testing old and new fabriano watercolor studio paper (see attachment).Both prints were from the same negative, 7minute exposure, 4minute soak in water.

Bockingford in the spiralbound packs at your nearest WHSmith work fine for playing with. If you do have the above problems you can soak the paper in a 50/50 mix of vinegar and water (should end up with approximately 2% acid solution out of that which is all you need) then hang up to dry (don't wash it off). I really hate doing that though so I do try to find papers that require little prep work.

[Sorry, image deleted during forum software upgrade. Please re-upload if so inclined.]

[Janet_P]

Ah, can I join in the workshop please 
Here's my first attempt on plain old watercolour paper, printed on WH Smith's OHP acetate. The original neg is very contrasty, so I'm not too concerned about that but I wondered why there's no actual white in the print, it simply yellow. is that the paper? Under-exposure, over-exposure?

I love the prints I've seen here and I'm experimenting with cyanotype and salt prints - I'll post those results when I get them.

Thanks
Janet

[Sorry, image deleted during forum software upgrade. Please re-upload if so inclined.]

[Pete_R]

There's others more qualified than me to answer but I just wondered if this is the traditional cyanotype recipe or the new (single solution) version. The new one seems to need a citric acid bath to clear all the yellow while that doesn't seem to be the case with the orginal one.

I'm sure one of the others will enlighten us both.

[Janet_P]

Ah ha! Yes, I am using the new one, and I didn't add citric acid. Do you think it's too late to rewash it now? Thanks, I'm pretty pleased that my first attempt came out at all so any ways in which I could improve things is a bonus.

Thanks again
Janet

[Pete_R]

Do you think it's too late to rewash it now?

Wouldn't have thought so. I would try it.

[Pete_R]

I found a site which said you could bleach cyanotypes in baking soda and then tone them in tea. How could I resist.

I had a hard time making the scan look like the original but this is pretty close. Has some possibilities I think with the right subject.

[Heather]

It's not baking soda, it's washing soda, Sodium biCarbonate(baking soda pH around 8?) vs Sodium Carbonate (pH around 10). In the UK this is in the laundry section of the supermarket under the name/brand DP Washing Crystals (comes in a green&white 1kg sack for under a quid) You need to bleach back more it looks like (common mistake when toning with tea/coffee & sodium carbonate). Apparently pure tannic acid used in homebrewing works better and gives less staining to the paper but I've not been particularly bothered to make cyanotype look like every other alt process (brown brown brown. I don't like brown!)

I've never worked with the cyanotype2 stuff. I'd rather fish the floaty mould out of my ammonium ferric citrate with a wooden chopstick than work with more toxic chemicals.  I've heard it's even more picky about papers it'll work with and I have enough trouble finding good paper with the traditional formula. Interestingly the posted image of cyanotype2 reminds me of what a traditional cyanotype looks like completely unwashed.  It's a bit odd...

[Pete_R]

It's not baking soda, it's washing soda

What I found said baking soda - and it seemed to work fine. Maybe washing soda would be quicker/better but I don't keep it but I do keep baking soda.

You need to bleach back more

Quite possibly but as this was the first time I've ever tried I wasn't sure how much to bleach it.

[outofcontxt]

Peter, could you provide us with a link to that site. Thanks much!

Bill

[Pete_R]

Peter, could you provide us with a link to that site. Thanks much!

It's at http://billchambers.org/images/artists%20notes/cyanotype.pdf

The bit about bleaching/toning is at the very end of the pdf.