Saturday 11 June 2011

Cyanotypes (blueprints)



I haven't used a blog for a while, so plan to get back into it today, inspired by a good day at the Dower House, Morville where Shropshire Butterflies book,  was launched.  I had a few prints and some cyanotype bunting on show.   You can see some of the bunting above.

I made some drawings on drafting film, picked some flowers and one of my most vigorous weeds, and exposed those to some light sensitive paper in my ultra violet machine in the studio.  I hadn't used this process for a while, it was a lot of fun and proved to be quite addictive.  I had planned to do a few test pieces, then a short piece of bunting to celebrate my sister visiting at the weekend, until eventually I had between 4 and 5 metres of it and offered to take it to Morville.  I didn't have time to waterproof it but it didn't matter as it hung inside. Wax, lamination or possibly resin could work for that.

Cyanotype (blueprint)  was invented by Sir John Herschel in 1842 and  was the first successful non-silver photographic printing process. It was also used for the first photographically illustrated book. Anna Atkins' (1799-1871) brainscapes are interesting too http://wcma.williams.edu/brainscapes-and-anna-atkinss-cyanotypes/