Cyan Printing

I went to an excellent workshop in Cyanotype Printmaking run by welsh artist Sian Hughes at the Bluecoat Design Gallery.  This is a very old photographic process that is becoming more popular with artists and printmakers.

All summer I was collecting wildflower material especially for this day and although none of us had tried this technique before, some very interesting images were produced.   An eclectic mix of artists, printmakers, photographers and textile artists all managed to manipulate the process to their own specific interest.



Sian took all the preparation work upon herself by coating the paper with the  light sensitive emulsion  and calculating exposure time before the workshop.
(It is possible to buy precoated paper but this tends to be more expensive. )

Using 3 dimensional objects it was necessary to vacuum press the items to the sensitized paper.

But experimenting with pre-scanned and printed transparencies  or flat objects would make that easier as they can be sandwiched between glass or perspex..

Layered exposures is a very painterly way of creating images as demonstrated by Sian below.

Sian Hughes Print

Since then I have recently aquired ready impregnated cyanotype paper from Amazon and a large but cheap acrylic nail curer.  This will hopefully provide consistant UV light exposure.  Experiments will be posted at a later date.