Blogging for the Baron: Paper Jewels

Tracing out sizes for parchment cyanotype blanks

I've been out of it, Spiders. Since Christmas, I have entirely lost track of time. My dog became increasingly ill after some surgery and had to be put to sleep to keep him comfortable. I came down with one of the nastiest colds I ever remember, right about the same time. This cough syrup is messing me up worse than I figured. I even missed the Folded Paper Project for the first time. Basically, I've just been all kinds of messed up.

Still, there has been some progress. I've completed two more of my cyanotype parchment jewelry pieces: a ring and a pendant.

For this week's update, I'm going to go through the process step-by-step. It'll be fun! Trust me!

The first step is the "negative" which, in this case, is made by sticking a small leaf onto a piece of clear packing tape. I use the tape because it works great for when I'm dealing with bones (which are anything but flat) or felt, or anything else that doesn't lend itself to simple contact-printing under glass. When dealing with very small leaves and plants, it's also handy to keep them in place and keep track of them. It lets me arrange roots, small leaflets and even multiple tiny leaves easily as well. So, stick all your plant material onto the packing tape. For longer shelf life of your negatives, you can double-layer the tape, stick-to-stick, so that they're 'sealed'. I don't do this, because I'm alright discarding the negatives after a few uses. I'd rather find new material than keep using the same leaves over and over. Still, it's an option. If you don't seal the tape-negative somehow, it will accumulate dust, debris and gunk.

Next, stick or place your tape-negative onto your coated parchment. I've discussed the actual process of coating in some detail, so I won't go into it here. You could, in theory, use another sturdy material to make similar pieces. Heavy paper, or even stiff cloth could be glued down and covered with a protective layer. I use the parchment because, well, it's kind of my thing, ya know, Spiders? Dead stuff, necrography, etc. This last bit is very important: do not trim down the material yet. You want to leave extra space around the final border of your print so that you can trim it to fit exactly into whatever object you're going to be placing it in. Parchment and paper both deform and shrink a bit when soaked, so be mindful. Do all your trimming and sizing at the end.

Once you've got the tape-negative in place on your material, place it in a frame. I actually have a nice itty-bitty 4x5 contact frame that I'm using for this, but you can use any of the jury-rigged contact frames that I've demonstrated before, or just a picture frame. Whatever works! Then leave the frame out in sunlight for a complete exposure. I'm extremely lax with this. Due to the weak sunlight in the winter months, I tend to set my exposures out the night before and collect them in the afternoon. That gives them a good 6 or 8 hours of exposure. When you're just doing photograms, its almost impossible to over-expose. If you were trying to print image negatives (which is an option!) then you'd want to go with a shorter, more controlled exposure.

Cyanotype Parchment Pendant

After the exposure is done, just remove the tape-negative and coated material from the frame. Unstick the tape negative, if necessary, and drop your prints in the wash. For me, considering the size, I don't really wash the prints. I let them soak in a Dixie cup full of water for a few hours. They're done within 2-3 hours, tops.

The nice thing about these prints being so small is that it's fairly feasible to speed up the drying process for them with a hair dryer. Keeping them from flying all across the room while doing so? That's a bit harder. I stick 'em in place with a push-pin driven through one corner (which will get cut off anyway). At this point, you're really done with the photography portion of the exercise.

Cyanotype Parchment Ring

Now all you need to do is trim off the excess material, getting down to a size that fits exactly into your setting. Of all the steps, I find this the most annoying, especially for rounded shapes. It drives me nuts, but some of y'all may have really awesome ideas for cutting down on the annoyance. Lemme know if you do! I recommend using paper templates to ensure you don't over-trim your finished prints. That's sad when it happens, because you can't un-snip a cut print.

I recommend a silicone epoxy like E6000 for glueing parchment to metal, but if you decided to go with paper, cloth or some other material, use whatever bonds best. E6000 is pretty great overall, but it can be quite messy, fume-y and a little toxic. Use with care.

That's really it. You just make your tiny cyanotype, cut it to fit the jewelry object, glue it in place, and you're done. You can go further, with things like fixing a glass bezel in place as a protective layer, or pouring resin on top to seal things up, but I'm just starting experiments with that. They're totally optional. Parchment is a very sturdy material, and the cyanotype process is extremely archival. Items made this way, even without a protective coating, should last for decades.

Have fun, my Spiders!

Blogging for Thor: Dem Blue Bones

Shoulder #1 -- My first real success at printing on bone!

Hello, spiders! Exciting news!! I've been meaning to try printing cyanotypes on bone for a fairly long time, but it was only within the last week that I finally got some appropriate bones. One of my friends goes hunting with his family, and they just toss the bones and other scraps in the woods for scavengers. He was kind enough to go digging around the woods where they drop the bones and found me three scapulae and half of a femur. The results are very encouraging, and I'm hoping to get more bones to print in the future.

In addition to the bones, I also had a single deer antler to test out. Last semester, one of my students offered me some antlers that she was using in a biology experiment. She'd taken core samples from them to do analysis on, leaving most of the antler perfectly intact. She didn't need the remainder, so she gave me several antlers that I could test on. I coated one of them months ago, but never got around to exposing it until this week. There are more antlers, hiding somewhere... I'll have to track them down eventually.

In-Progress Author's Note: Whew! This post is ending up a lot longer than I expected, and it doesn't even have any pictures added yet! I'm breaking it into sections. Don't worry my Spiders, I just said sections, not different posts.

Cleaning the Bones
This is actually something I'm more worried about in the future than something I had to deal with in these tests. The bones given to me were weeks or months old and had been laying out in the woods. Scavengers and nature had already done the cleaning for me. If you end up having to clean your own bones from something fresher, like a Thanksgiving turkey, then this guide might be helpful. It's written by some awesome little kid that loves collecting skeletons. Rock on, creepy little dude.

Seriously, listen to him when he says stuff stinks. I was foolish enough to try boiling some turkey bones from a Thanksgiving turkey (what, you thought that was a random example?) a few years ago and my entire apartment stank for days. Never again. Next time, I'm stuffing the bones in a bag, tying the bag in a tree and letting nature have at it.

Coating the Bones

Coating is messy work.

The antler coated much more easily than the bones, but both surfaces required several coats of chemistry to achieve a decent stain. Even though bone's theoretically porous, the surface is not very absorbent. Coating took a good while, since I allowed each coat to dry partially before applying the next one.

As I said, I coated the antler months ago, so I don't remember precisely how long I waited between coats, or even how many I applied. I do remember it was several, though. It was kept in a dark box, sitting on a metal grate, so it could dry thoroughly. A few days of drying turned into months because I just couldn't figure out what to print on it. I'm still not super happy with the antler, but at least I know the general theory works, if I can find the rest of the antlers from that bag. I've put them somewhere in my lab and just can't figure out where. Don't you hate when you misplace body parts, Spiders?

On the first scapula, pictured at the top of this entry, I applied several coats of chemistry, allowing each one to soak in as much as possible before adding new liquid. The first few coats were allowed to set overnight, then I added some more the next morning before finally exposing the bone to sunlight. I'm not sure if it was just the sheer amount of chemistry applied to that first scapula, or if it was allowing a longer drying period, but the  the color on it is much deeper and truer than the later tests.

The other two scapulae and the femur got fewer coats and less drying time. I'm not nearly as pleased with them, so next time, I'll be more patient and more generous with the chemistry. Still, they're perfectly acceptable results, just not as really nice as the first one.

I also tried soaking a knuckle bone in cyanotype chemistry (one good soak for about 2-3 minutes of sloshing and swirling) but that didn't come out at all. The rounded shape did not prove very easy to adhere a plant to, so the image is almost invisible. A majority of the blue color also washed right out of the bone, leaving only a dingy blue-grey. Not real happy with either the color or the image, so I'm probably not going to be doing much more with the rest of the ankle, knuckle and joint bones I have.

Printing the Bones

Packing tape to the rescue!

The biggest challenge of printing on a substrate like bone is getting, and keeping, tight contact between the object used in the print and the surface of the bone. Bones aren't flat, and even if I could balance a sheet of glass on them somehow, pressing down with a solid object wouldn't give me good contact. So, after very little thought or consideration, I used clear packing tape to hold the leaves in place against the bones. It seems to have worked rather spectacularly well on the mostly-flat bones, and even on the antlers. The packing tape did not work well on the almost-round knuckle bone, but I don't think anything could have.

This just didn't work.

In the second set of bones, I ran into a small problem with the tape. Using a fresh leaf created a kind of miniature green house effect, where the moisture that sweated out of the leaf beaded and gathered under the tape. The evaporated moisture created a small bubble and made the tape lose a lot of stickyness. I lost a bit of contact and got some image fuzz as a result. In the future, I'll stick to dried plants for bone prints.

After taping the bones up, I exposed them for a few hours. About 2 for the first set (the antler and the first scapula), then I went up to 4 hours for the second set (femur, other two scapulae and the knuckle). Again, despite a much longer exposure the second set was never as bright or deep a blue as the first set. Coating was the issue there, not exposure. Both sets were out in direct, bright, hot sunlight.

Washing the Bones
I just dumped the exposed bones into a big tub of water and let them soak for about an hour. Afterwards, I hit them with a bit of hydrogen peroxide. The first scapula reacted fairly well to the hydrogen peroxide, forming the intense blue color seen in the photo, but none of the other bones showed any reaction at all to it. Their blues did become slightly darker and more true after drying was complete, but overall they look much the same as they did once washing was complete.

As a warning for any Spiders that want to do their own cyanotype bones, you are generally not going to get any kind of idea what the final result is going to look like just by looking at the unwashed bones. The washing and a nice long soak is necessary to allow the image to develop, much moreso than for a traditional cyanotype.

Shoulder #2 -- Second success!

Drying the Bones
I honestly didn't have to do much drying or final cleaning. It's been so hot here lately (90s and up) that I just left everything outside in the blazing sun for a few hours. They're ...heheh... bone dry now, and looking great. There's a tiny bit of tendon left on one scapula, but it doesn't smell at all, so I'm not going to mess with it.

There you have it, Spiders. It's entirely possible to print cyanotype images onto bone and horn. It's not even that hard! You can find more photos of the bones and antler prints on my Instagram (I have an Instagram now!) and, soon, on my Flickr.

Blogging for Freya: Salting Spiders, Part 2

Print made with lite salt

Hello, Spiders! Welcome to part 2 of my Salt Print learnable. You're in for a treat, because this is the full-length version and it took forever to write.

Set-up
You can do this process almost anywhere, but you're going to need a flat area to work. If it's an area you care about, first cover it in a plastic tablecloth or protective sheeting. The plastic prevents the nitrate from soaking through a towel and getting on anything important. However, the nirate can slide around on plastic, so to be extra super careful you could put towels or a cloth down on your plastic.

Make sure you have your gloves (to avoid black spots on your nails and hands) and your protective glasses (to avoid eye damage) in place. You don't need to actually put them on until you take out the silver nitrate. I don't 'suit up' until I'm ready for the silver nitrate coating, because the gloves make my fingers clumsy. I always wear my glasses, because without them, I can't see. I have little plastic additions to my glasses that clip on to provide extra eye protection. Goggles just fog up on me and hurt my face. Whatever method you use to protect your eyes is up to you, but it is kinda important.

And that's it, you're ready to go. Protect the area, protect yourself, and get ready for some printing!

Print on Lokta Fiber Paper

Paper
Select your paper. As with most alternative processes, you want a high-quality printmaking or watercolor paper. I've had great luck with Arches Aquarelle and Rives BFK. Others have recommended Crane Kid Finish, Bienfang or pretty much any cotton rag paper. If it works for cyanotypes, anthotypes, van dykes or other alternative processes, it's probably great for salt prints.

Personally, I prefer smooth surfaces with just a bit of tooth. Too much texture in the paper and it starts removing detail from your print. Too smooth a surface just looks bland to me. I like a nice medium. Hot press papers are generally great for this.

You generally don't need to size your paper, but a simple gelatin sizing may be helpful if you are experiencing significantly less contrast than you expect or desire. To do a gelatin sizing, simply mix up unflavored gelatin (Knox seems the most common brand around here) in hot water and soak the paper in it. Allow to dry completely, then proceed to the next step.

Small note: handmade papers or exotic papers may be too absorbent to use for this process without sizing. I attempted to use some Nepalese lokta fiber paper and it's basically just a rag made of cellulose. I wasn't able to spread the silver nitrate at all and ended up using way too much of the chemical because it had to absolutely saturate the paper. If I experiment again with this paper, I'll be using sizing. I had similar issues with cyanotypes and anthotypes on hand-made paper using dryer lint and shredded recyclables. 

Print made with sea water

Salt
You'll need to make some salt water. The amount of salt in the water is entirely up to your discretion. It's perfectly viable to use seawater. Normally I add about 2 teaspoons of salt to a liter of water. Less than a 2% salt solution doesn't give very much of an image at all. That's basically the minimum required. I have been told that the more salt you add, the more contrast you'll see in the final image. I have not seen a significant difference myself.

You can use chemical grade sodium chloride (additive-free salt) and distilled water. There's no need to use pure chemistry, though. I don't use distilled water. I generally use tap water that I know is absolutely not pure. The pH is on the basic side, it's hard water with a lot of calcium and iron. It works fine. Sea water works fine too and who knows what's wrong with that stuff. Rainwater is fine. The type of water you use, as long as it's not actually contaminated with heavy metals or something, won't produce a big difference in your prints. Minor differences, sure, but not huge ones.

The type of salt you use will dramatically affect your prints. I like using "lite" salt. That's a mixture of 50% sodium chloride and 50% potassium chloride. The important part of the salt is chloride, since you're using it to convert the silver nitrate to silver chloride. Silver chloride is far more reactive to light and produces a much stronger image than silver nitrate. How you get the chloride in your paper isn't important to the light-sensitivity, but it is important to the color. I haven't experimented with ammonium chloride, but I know it can also be used for salt prints.

Lite salt produces violet images that, when fixed, turn pale yellow. I have not bothered tracking down any pure potassium chloride to test what it does, but I imagine it has a slightly different effect. My kosher salt images are red to brown before fixing and turn brown or black after being fixed. Prints made with sea water from the Florida coast have produces a nice middle ground

Print made with both lite and kosher salt

Here's a cool tidbit: if you put different types of salt in your water, they don't always mix. The result can be a splotched print that has some areas of the paper coated in one type of salt and the rest in the other. It can be a very fun calico effect. I've gotten especially stunning results prior to fix, using half lite salt and half kosher salt, to get a violet-red combination. Don't underestimate the appearance of the post-fix combination of red and gold from the same combination, though. It's pretty awesome, too.

The basic step here is to mix up your salt water and then soak your paper in it. As a faster alternative, you can simply paint the salt water onto the paper with a brush. Either way is fine!

Silver Nitrate
It's time to put on that protective gear! Get your gloves and glasses firmly in place. Once your salted paper is bone dry, paint on your silver nitrate. Do this in low light to avoid fogging the paper or the jar of silver nitrate. I know it's in amber glass, but better safe than sorry. When not in use, the glass of nitrate should be stored in a dry, dark place. I work at night, with a dim lamp or computer monitor as my light source.

Use an eyedropper, pipette or other method to drag a thin line of the 15% silver nitrate liquid across the top of your sheet of paper. Then you can spread it out into an even coating using a foam brush, hake brush, glass puddle pusher or even just a regular flat paint brush.

Getting an even coating can be tricky, because until it exposes, the silver nitrate solution is clear. It can be very difficult to see if you've left any streaks, brushmarks or spots behind. I recommend simply doing two or three light, even coats across the entire surface going in different directions. If you want an especially dark image, you can apply two heavy coats of silver.

Exposure
As with most of my guides, I simply suggest using a picture frame to expose your prints. It's cheap and easy to obtain. Head to your local art supply store, or even the local Target, and grab some inexpensive picture frames that have a hard back. Don't get the really cheap ones with the hinged cardboard back, they're just not sturdy enough to provide good contact between your negative (or object) and the coated paper. I'm going to go into extreme detail on different methods of exposure in a future post.

Since the salt printing process is a "printing out process", it develops while it exposes. You can test exposure simply by looking at a portion of the exposed silver that isn't covered by your negative or objects. When it reaches a density you're happy with (generally dark rusty red or brown), you're done!

Fixing
Now, it is possible to simply treat a salt print like a lumen print and avoid fixing it. However, that isn't traditional and the salt print is a very traditional process. It's also a lot more tactile than the lumen print, so I do generally fix my salt prints. An unfixed salt print, like most unfixed prints, will continue to darken and expose in even standard interior lighting.

To fix a salt print, you can mix your own fixer (difficult and annoying) or use standard photo fixer. Guess which approach I favor? That's right, the standard photo fixer. I use Sprint Rapid Fixer, because that's what I can borrow from the university. It's also what I've used for my entire photographic career. I dilute it heavily, about 20ml of concentrate to a liter of water, meaning it's at 20% of the regular working strength. You do not want stronger fix; it will bleach your prints. Even using the weakened fixer, only fix for 1-2 minutes at most. That's more than enough to fix the image. Again, over-fixing will bleach your prints.

Spiders, you should be aware that fixing a salt print does cause a potentially dramatic color shift. I mentioned earlier that the violet images produced by "lite" salt will fix to a pale yellow. The ruddy reds of kosher or regular salt will fix to a duller, darker red or (with high levels of silver) to an almost black brown. I generally prefer the pre-fix image, but not always. So I scan both before and after fixing.


That's all I've got, Spiders. Between this post and the last one, you should be ready to sally forth and print as long as you've got sun, salt and silver!

Blogging for Thor: Teaching Spiders about Salt

Salt print made during a demo with
tap water and fast-food salt packets.
It doesn't get any less exacting than this.

Well, Spiders, I've been talking about salt prints for a while now. I've finally set aside some time to document the process and write a short guide to making them in your kitchen. Maybe not literally in your kitchen, because everything I've tried to remove the silver stains from my counter has failed. I've got a nice splatter of brown dots there and they show no signs of going anywhere. If you take care to avoid and spills, drips or splatters, you should be fine. Then again, you're spiders and you don't have kitchens. Just work anywhere, really.

Salt prints aren't complicated. They're also not very dangerous. You can purchase the silver nitrate required in a pre-mixed low-concentration solution. I bought my 15% silver nitrate from Bostick & Sullivan. Here's the link to the specific product I used. 100ml should last a fairly long time, since you only need a single eyedropper full to coat a 5x7 sheet of paper. Each eyedropper is maybe 1ml.

By avoiding powdered silver nitrate, you significant reduce the risks of the chemical. In its dilute, liquid form, it won't burn your skin or get into your respiratory system. It can still cause some nasty harm if it gets in your eyes, but wearing glasses or goggles will protect you. At worst, it will cause stains on counters, skin and anything else organic (including plastics... like plexiglass and acrylic). So what safety gear do you need? Gloves and glasses. The most basic of chemical safety practices will be entirely sufficient.

I am assuming that you use 15% liquid silver nitrate solution. I won't give any details about how to mix the solution yourself, because I never do that. I don't like caustic chemical dust in my house.

Now, onto the actual process! Here's the short, simple version first.

Basic Materials

• Salt (approx. 10-100 grams)
• Water (approx. 1 liter)
• Brushes (foam, hake or flats) or a Puddle Pusher
• Soaking basin or tray
• Jug or glass to mix salt water in
• 15% silver nitrate solution
• Eyedropper
• Rubber gloves
• Protective eye goggles or glasses
• High-quality watercolor or printmaking/drawing paper
• Picture frame or alternate exposure method
• Negatives or photogram objects
• OPTIONAL: Hair dryer
• OPTIONAL: Photographic Paper Fixer (diluted to 25% regular working strength)

Simplified Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Gather your materials and set up!
2. Mix up a 1-5% solution of salt water.
3. Soak your paper in the salt water for at least 10 minutes.
4. Dry completely!
5. Use the eyedropper to apply a line of silver nitrate across the top of the salted paper.
6. Spread the silver nitrate into a thin, even coat with a foam brush.
7. Dry Completely!
8. Place a negative or photogram object on the coated paper.
9. Cover the paper and your negative/object with glass. Real glass, not plexiglass.
10. Place in the sun for ~10-20 minutes.
11. VERY OPTIONAL: Rinse the print in a salt water bath for 5 minutes to remove extra silver. 
12. OPTIONAL: Fix the print in regular photo fixer (diluted to 25% strength) for 1 minute.

That's it. That's the entire process! Well... basically. I can, and will, go into a bit more detail. Actually, a lot more detail, my arachnodroid friends. The rest of the write-up is already over 1000 words long and it's still not done. So that's going to be broken off into a second entry. Stay tuned, spiders!

Blogging for Thor: Halo There!

I had a lot of fun today playing salted paper prints, but that isn't what this blog is about. That's because I had this thing to talk about first, and also because the salt print blog is going to take a while to write and it's 10:45 right now, as I start this. I wouldn't make the midnight deadline if I did the salted print post. Plus, in all fairness to this post, I did have the idea for it first. Mostly.

You know what, spiders, just read the blog. This post is actually informative and useful, while the salt print one is just kinda cool and fun. So there's that, too. Not sure what else there was.

Pre-exposed print with emphasized halo

One of the really cool things about lumen prints is that if you use fresh plants to make your contact prints, there will often be a "halo" around your subject. The moisture in the fresh plant material sweats out under the sunlight and heat, soaking into the paper. The wet paper reacts differently to light than the dry paper does, creating a different hue or value depending on what kind of paper you're dealing with.

This week's fun fact is that you can dramatically enhance the appearance of such halos by leaving your lumen print out to "pre-expose" under indirect light or interior lights. The low amount of light is enough to begin the exposure of your paper, and start the moisture reaction, but not enough for a big dramatic tonal shift that will produce a vibrant lumen. So the halo has time to creep outward with the moisture while the exposure is still happening fairly slowly and subtly.

Once your halo has been established in a few minutes to a few hours, take your print outside and let it expose in direct sunlight. Now, all at once, the halo and the background will darken dramatically, creating a very stark, very visible halo in your image. That's because the low light allowed it to form first, then expose. When you just expose a lumen normally the halo is struggling to form while exposure is already happening all around it. The moisture doesn't have time to sink in and affect the paper as much, because more of the paper is being exposed before the moisture can spread out.

Regular print with faint halo

A pretty cool trick, and one I can't take credit for. I learned it from John Fobes, who is another enthusiastic lumen printer with far more experience than I have. He discusses the idea a little bit here, in this particular image. Here's the relevant quote:

Polycontrast is capable of producing a nice halo if you prepare the specimen [and] first let the prepared print sit for a few hours under weak room light before you expose it to sunlight.

Mr. Fobes is referring specifically to one type of paper (Kodak Polycontrast II), but it holds true for many types of papers since the underlying mechanic of the halos is the same. Note that this technique works best in hot places, because the heat will wither the plant material faster, releasing more of that lovely moisture onto and into your paper. That's another reason why spring and summer are the best times to work with lumen printing.


Whelp, that's all Spiders!

Blogging for Thor: Luminous Chroma

My best chromo-lumen!

Hello spiders! It's 4 AM and I'm really tired. You're not, I know, because you're just bundles of code scattered through a series of tubes. Whatever. You don't understand me, spiders. But you get me, you know? I love you, spiders.

So anyway. As you know, I love lumen prints and recently I've been experimenting with the chromoskedasic sabatier technique. Oh, actually I just reviewed the blog to provide a link to me talking about chromo (so much shorter to call it that), but didn't find anything. So you don't know that I've been experimenting with that process! I'll have to devote a blog to talking about it! Cool. Anyway, I totally have been doing that. And lumens. Back at SPESE 2013, when I was taking Angela Wells' great workshop on chromo, I asked her if she'd even combined the technique with lumen printing. She had not, since she had not heard of lumen printing. Another guy there, Joshua White who teaches up at App State, is very much into lumens but was just learning about chromo and had never combined them. I did some research online and I can't find any results of anyone that does combine the techniques.

I like the contrast!

Anyone except me! WOO. Turns out you totally can combine them. All you need to do is take a lumen print, dip it in very dilute developer (or it'll just vanish because lumens are massively overexposed by their nature) for a few seconds, wash it off in water and then proceed to chromo all over it as normal. It turns out pretty awesome, actually. I find that it's a great way to add visual interest to empty areas of a lumen print, creating a much more dynamic figure-ground relationship than most lumens tend to have. It also brings more of a personal, organic touch to the lumen process. There is a lot of potential to explore, especially for artists that have fine manual dexterity and some skill at painting. Chromo is basically painting with chemistry, so this combination of techniques can effectively be used as a very alchemical form of hand-coloring. Hand-coloring with metallic deposit precipitation. The best kind of hand-painting, obviously.

The puke-green is actually
oil-on-water shiny metal.

I'll be updating my Chromo-Lumen Flickr Gallery with future images for you lovely spiders (and any humans, lovely or not) to check out. So far I just have four, but I have a lot of boring lumens to attack with this technique!

My only regret is that chromo prints still need to be fixed. Just like lumens, they lose a great deal of saturation and vibrance when fixed, but it's pretty much necessary. As I lament in my last post, the intensely reflective, metallic nature of chromo prints just can't be scanned or photographed. It needs to be seen physically. That means the print needs to be the final product, not a digital reproduction, and that... means fixing the prints. Le suck, but what can you do?

Dustbusting 101

I found a cool trick today in Photoshop. My cyanotypes, anthotypes and lumens all need to be scanned, so I spend a lot of time in Photoshop cleaning up dust and debris. No matter how clean you get your scanner, and how much you wipe and baby the prints, there's always dust and stuff sitting on there. Somewhere. It's always there. And you have to get rid of it in Photoshop. It takes forever, and it's tedious... but there's a faster way!

The Spot-Healing brush is awesome at spotting. That's what it's for, after all. However, if you have a lot of really tiny dust, it's a pain. There's the Dust &Scratches filter, which is great, but it has the downside of also removing detail. So for a long time, I combined both of them. I ran a fairly low-powered Dust & Scratches filter across the entire print, then cleaned up the big stuff with Spot-Healing. Pretty simple, if extremely time-consuming. The biggest issue was that, even at low power, the Dust & Scratches filter still removes detail. It's especially nasty if you're printing on a textured surface and want to retain details of that surface tooth, because that's one of the easiest things to loose.

What I realized today is that most dust is lighter than the rest of the image. That's what makes it stand out. So a really, really simple way to get rid of tons of dust all at once is to apply a medium-strength Dust & Scratches filter...then set it to the "Darker Only" blending mode. Holy crap!! It works so well! It takes out virtually all the light dust and specks, leaving behind just a faintly blurred pixel here or there. It's amazing. Then all you have to do is Spot Heal the darker specks, which tend to be far less numerous and troublesome.

This technique saved me at least an hour tonight, and the results are hands down better than the way I did things before. No lost detail! No having to make tricky masks to restore the detail lost to Dust & Scratches. It's Dust & Scratches that only effects dust!!!


I'm pretty excited, can you tell? CAN YOU, SPIDERS?! Eeee!


UPDATE: I added pictures! You'll see that I have two dust-removal layers in this example: one is the Darker-Only Dust & Scratches copy and the second is a regular Dust & Scratches copy. That's because I hate doing repair work on my original layer, just in case I make a mistake. I also came across a pretty simple extra step.

You see, if you just do a Darker-Only layer, then a dark dust layer, you have a few nagging spots left over where the Darker-Only Dust & Scratches (DODS!) is still showing that dark dust. This happens because your DODS layer is on top of your DDL (dark dust layer) and if you Spot-Heal away the dust on DDL, you can still see whatever was there on the earlier-created DODS layer. Here are the steps I follow in this dust-removal scheme.

Step 1: Open file.
Step 2: Duplicate Background layer to create your first DODS layer.
Step 3: Run the Dust & Scratches filter at low power (generally Radius 2-3, Threshold 1) on your first DODS layer.
Step 4: Duplicate the Background layer again, creating your DDL (dark dust layer).
Step 5: Spot Heal away all the dark dust on the DDL.
Step 6: Duplicate the DDL to create your second DODS layer.
Step 7: Run the Dust & Scratches filter at low power (generally Radius 2-3, Threshold 1) on your second DODS layer.
Step 8: Delete your first DODS layer.

You should now be left with three layers: your second DODS on top, DDL in the middle and Background on the bottom. Theoretically you could save a few steps by creating the DDL and doing all the dark dust Spot Healing first, but I found it much easier to create the initial DODS layer just so that while cleaning up my dark dust on the DDL, I had less distraction. The photo was already so much cleaner from creating the initial DODS layer that it was much easier to identify and remove the dark dust. It only adds an extra few clicks and a few seconds to your time. Still, there's no reason you can't eliminate steps 2 and 3 from my list.

I hope this helps someone else out! All that time spotting is time you could be printing! Or playing games. Or whittling. Or whatever.

Blogging for Spiders: Back in Blue

I haven't been feeling particularly artistic lately, my dear spiders. You've no doubt noticed that by the recent trend of blogs falling further and further behind on the weekly schedule and generally being a bit gloomy and lacking in new projects or progress on old projects. Winter isn't my most productive time, but that's hardly an excuse. I've just been in a rut and battling the fog-monster. Today I launched a massive attack on his nebulous ass. I got out into my lab and did some work.

Previously, I've talked about printing cyanotypes on parchment. It's pretty awesome, because the parchment imparts a remarkable amount of texture that rarely manages to detract from the subject matter. The organic nature of the material, and the fact that I print on scraps instead of properly processed, sized and cut sheets, means that each piece has a different texture, surface, thickness and quality. The scraps I get come from any of four types of parchment (deer, goat, sheep, calf), but I have no way to tell which I'm actually using.

Just to clarify, when I say 'parchment', I do not mean the stuff you buy at the grocery store to bake on. I do not mean the vellum you buy at office stores to put in wedding invitations. It's thin-cut and treated animal skin, the kind of material used in medieval documents and illuminated manuscripts. If you'd like to buy some of your own to play with, I get my supplies from a tannery in New York state: Pergamena.

Eventually I would love to order a full-size skin and do large format cyanotype contact prints, but at the moment that isn't feasible since I don't have a place to work large enough for that, or a way to handle washing, drying and pressing a skin that big. Cyanotypes printed on parchment must deal with the qualities of the material. Parchment, despite being used as paper, behaves very little like paper. It reacts differently to moisture, heat and tension.

So, how do you print cyanotypes on parchment successfully? Let me 'splain to you.

Coating the Parchment

Stretched and pinned parchment sheets

First off, your parchment needs to be stretched before it can be coated. That's because the parchment will curl and warp in response to moisture. It will then dry in that shape while you allow the chemistry to dry. You'll want to pin, tape or otherwise secure your parchment to a solid surface before coating. This will allow the parchment to keep its shape much better than just trying to coat and dry it loose. Personally, I use a small cork-board covered in paper towels (extra absorbent padding, plus easy to clean by replacing the towels) to handle smaller pieces of parchment. Larger sheets are taped down to pieces of particle board. You may be able to get away with pushing broad-based pushpins and instead of spearing through the parchment, just using the plastic to hold it in place. I try doing that, because I don't particularly like holes in my parchment, but it doesn't always work out. Especially later.

One sheet of parchment coated.

When coating your parchment, I recommend a small foam brush. You don't want to over-saturate the parchment. Depending on the type of parchment you're using, it can be anywhere from slick and hard (the chemistry will try to run right off and you really have to work it into the material) or it can be soft and suedey (the chemistry is sucked right in and absorbs very smoothly). The small foam brush lets you get into small corners, which is great if you're using small sheets of parchment. You'll have to decide for yourself if you want to cover the entire surface, or leave an un-coated border. I like leaving the border, but I've tried it both ways and been satisfied with the results. The border just lends your piece a nice, defined edge.

Drying the Parchment

Once you've coated your parchment, you have to let it dry. As with all cyanotype materials, do this out of light. A warm, dry, dark environment is best if you can manage it. I keep mine in a cabinet. Allow parchment to dry fully, until it retains absolutely no moisture. This may take between 1-2 days depending on your local humidity and temperature. The dry parchment will be stiffer and far less flexible than it was when you started. After being exposed to moisture, the parchment never really gets that soft, flexible feeling back. I've contacted different tanners and they all say they's just how it works. They recommend not wetting your parchment, but obviously that isn't an option for anyone wanting to do photography on it. There's some additional chemicals and steps the tanners themselves use when dyeing and tanning the hide that keeps it supple, but it's not exactly stuff you can do at home (or want to, as it stinks). Just deal with the stiffness of the final product.

Exposing the Parchment

Exposure is fairly standard. Close contact between your negative or object and the chemistry is key. Be forewarned that because of the texture, surface quality and stiffness of your parchment, no cyanotype will ever come out as detailed and clear as it will on paper. Ever. It's just a factor of how the parchment is. I don't even try negatives anymore, they were too indistinct and fuzzy for me. I only use parchment to do contact prints with plants and objects.

There is one note here to be made: your exposures will be longer than normal. There's something about the parchment that makes it resistant to exposure. Chemistry on parchment doesn't hold detail very well, so you need to really burn it in. It's extremely common to find that your latent image is much more detailed and vibrant than your developed print. Check the example below.

Left: Latent Image. Right: Developed Image.

As a result of this detail loss, even during extended exposure (this was 2 hours), I scan my latent images. We've already discussed how I feel about archival permanence. I see no reason to discard such a powerful image just because it isn't chemically stable.

Washing the Parchment

Washing (developing) parchment cyanotypes (I call them cyanovellums) is also perfectly simple; just dump them into water and stir them around. They take longer to wash than regular paper, especially if the parchment itself is thick or soft. The thin, hard, slick parchment washes pretty fast and doesn't respond nearly as much to moisture as other types. The problem with washing cyanovellums is that whole issue parchment has with moisture.

Drying the Parchment

You can't dry them quickly, and you have to stretch them or they'll curl up like mad. If you try to dry them with an iron, they'll shrivel up like a slug under salt.

What you end up doing is drying them in a book, or under weight. Pad both sides of the parchment with towels or something else absorbent, then press the whole thing under heavy weight. Large books do great for this, but they can occasionally transfer ink from their pages onto the parchment. Might be interesting, but more likely to be a distraction from your image. Experiment with that, but go into it expecting to experiment. If you don't want any ink transfer, just put something absorbent between your parchment and the paper.

If you'd rather stretch and dry the parchment, you can do that. You will have to pin through the parchment. There's no way to use the weight of the pushpin's plastic to hold the parchment in place as it dries, like you can try doing while coating. There's too much water in the parchment that has to get out and the curling is going to have some force behind it. Stretch the parchment tight and pin it in place securely. You may choose just to pin the corners, or pin regularly around the sides. Because I don't like having holes in my parchments, I tend to prefer the weighted press method of drying. Stretch-n-pin does offer a bit of a chance to 'cheat' and dry the parchment faster. You can use a hairdryer on low, held several inches from the surface of the parchment, to speed up the drying. Don't hurry too much, even a small parchment will take a good 20 minutes or so, but you can manage it.

Either way, pinning or pressing, if you don't cheat with heat then you can expect it to take 2-3 days to fully dry your parchments. If working during a hot, sunny day then you can leave your press or stretching board outside and let the sun help you dry. That speeds up the process considerably!

Finishing Up

Now, if you've done something wrong, or your parchment just isn't cooperating, you can always re-soak and re-dry the parchment. Just remember, it's never, not ever, going to be as supple and flexible after being washed as it was when you first started.

Each cyanovellum is unique. A combination of the hide's texture, size, coloration and surface along with the variations in the cyanotype process itself will create an absolutely individual piece. You can go further and tone your cyanovellums, but the toning processes may not work exactly the same on parchment as they do on paper. For example, most bleaching processes turn cyanovellums golden orange.

Since the tactile appearance of cyanovellums is so striking, I prefer to present mine in shadowboxes. I generally choose a box with a natural wood finish, then cover the back of the box with either a black or natural, unbleached cloth. I use small sheets of cardboard or foamboard to raise the cyanovellums off the background, 'floating' them against the background. Hot glue makes for a good seal and can be easily removed from the back of the parchment without causing damage.

Blogging for the Baron: Slated For Next Week!

Yeah, I took a bit of a break this week on account of Christmas. I've done virtually nothing photographic for several days, aside from teach my sister how to use her new Nikon D3000. That meant when Thursday rolled around, I had nothing to blog about. Honestly, even if I had, I was wiped out from Christmas anyway and wouldn't have gotten anything up. Friday, I cleaned up my studio and organized my collection of lumen papers and anthotype dyes. My parents gave me an awesome new collection of the cutest little tiny Mason Jars to keep dyes in. I'll have to take a day or so soon to label everything and transfer the really low-volume dyes (indigo, woad, spirulina, etc) to the tiny jars.

Anyway, all that. I still haven't made any new lumens or anthotypes. So, today, I'm dedicating my blog to Baron Samedi and hoping he doesn't decide it'd be funny for me to get run over by a car or something. We cool, Baron? Hope so. I don't have any tobacco or rum (I have bourbon?) to offer him, but I've got some nasty pennies laying around.

What's the blog going to be about today? Actually, it's going to be about ideas. Cheap ones. Now, see, when I do actual photography-with-a-camera it's generally small object photography. Taking pictures of things I've made or found, mostly. Having a small studio space means I don't get too complex. I don't own a seamless. I make my backgrounds out of alternative resources. Today seems like a good day to talk about those.

Tiny felt turtle on a silk shirt

Old shirts and pants make great backgrounds. I have about six pairs of jeans and dozens of shirts, especially shirts from my mother and sister that they don't wear anymore. If you don't have any handy fabric-loving family members, there's always thrift stores. Silk shirts are especially nice, since the back of the shirt provides a large, solid area to work with. They come in lots of colors and after being worn and cleaned several times, they tend to lose that ludicrously-shiny appearance that new silk can have.

Black velvet makes a great background because of the way velvet absorbs light. It throws back very little shine, even under intense light. This is great for jewelry or anything else bright and shiny, where you want the background to absolutely disappear. I imagine white velvet would work great, too, but I've never tried it. Velvet is kinda expensive, though. My solution? A thrift store in Atlanta back when I was visiting for SPESE. I grabbed a velvet slip, sliced it in half and now have about a square yard (it was a really small slip) of black velvet that cost me $2. Velvet at the fabric store can run upwards of $10/yard. Since I do mostly small objects, a square yard is more than enough for me, most of the time.

Tiny felt Totoro on Polyfill

When I want a white background, I generally use a sheet of high-quality drawing paper like Stonehenge or Rives BFK. These papers are extremely matte and, like the velvet, throw back almost no shine or glare. They fold and bend easily, but won't ever ripple or drape like fabric. For a no-horizon seamless sweep, these nice papers are great. Plus you can roll them or store them in a sleeve. They're great! Very durable, too, and if they get dirty you can generally clean them with a decent-quality eraser.

I've also found that white polyfill (fluffy stuff used to fill stuffed animals or fluffy blankets) is a great background and spacer material. You can light it from behind or underneath to get a real 'glowing cloud' effect. Plus it's very posable and supportive for light objects like jewelry and small textile crafts.

ArtisanDice polyhedrals on natural slate

The title of this post, though, comes from one of my favorite backgrounds: slate. It's a great rock and it's very cheap. There's a little food mart / home store around here (Hillbilly Produce) that sells landscaping slate and I buy natural stones there for a few cents a pound. Generally I buy rocks maybe 1-2 feet in any direction, 1-2 inches thick. They have great texture and colors. Very subdued, but nice variations of blues, greys, browns, reds and oranges. If I want something flatter and maybe brighter colored, home improvement stores like Home Depot sell slate flagstone tiles for about $7 per pack of five square foot tiles. Or you can buy them individually if you just need one or two. Not only are the tiles great by themselves, they're great for using to 'extend' the natural rocks. You can put the tiles in the background and they blend in perfectly with the more textured stones, especially if you use a low depth of field. I like using slate when I want a more visually interesting background that will be complementary to my subject, but not detract. It's also great for wood, since it provides a nice contrast. It can be used to give things a vintage, rustic feel as well.

That's all for today folks! I might be back soon with an unscheduled entry, to make up for today's rambling craziness and the lack of holiday on-time-ness. But maybe not! With Grad School Applications looming, who knows?!

Half Dozen of the Other

My on-going attempt to create a step-by-step document of various cyanotype toning processes continues. There have been some failures and the weather for the last few weeks has decided to swing wildly between blazing sun and thunderstorms, meaning it's been quite difficult to actually make any new prints to experiment with. That and my small supply of good-quality 4x5 negatives combines to make this a rather long-term process.

Still, I've completed documentation of five different bleaching/toning processes. The title of the post mentions six because there's two variations on one of the processes showing what happens at extremes of dilution. The documents for each process are combined JPGs showing each stage, with a note next to each stage saying what solution was applied to achieve the shown result. I'll go into a bit more detail here, and maybe copy the more in-depth explanation over to Flickr later.

Oh, right! Flickr! Yes, because of the size of the files, they're being hosted on Flickr. Blogger gets mad at me when I try to post bunches of super-big files and it really isn't the best way to view them either. So, head over and check out This Collection on my Flickr for full views of the documentation.

Before we start getting into the details of each toning process, I want to take a moment and explain what a common word in the article means. "SuperTea" is what I call an easy way to get tannic acid at home without buying the chemical from a supply company. Tannins are present in all kinds of things: tea, coffee, some wines, wood, tobacco, etc. Brewing up an extremely potent mixture of black tea is just a fast, easy way to get tannic acid without buying it.

SuperTea Recipe: In 1/2 quart of water, microwave 8 bags of black tea for 10 minutes on high. Allow bags to steep for several hours. Before discarding the bags, squeeze them thoroughly to get out all that extra tannin. 

While it's fast and easy, SuperTea has downsides. Some pretty big ones. First off, all the stuff in the tea that isn't tannic acid. That stuff will stain your paper. I've had cyanotypes sitting in tannic acid for hours and come out with white highlights. Prints immersed in SuperTea are going to turn intense yellow-brown in just a few minutes. If that. I had one turn brown on me in only a few seconds when using fresh-brewed SuperTea (it works faster hot). So, that's going to reduce your contrast in the image dramatically by turning all your highlights brown. Guess what color it turns your shadows? Also brown. You see the problem. Further, because of the intense base-staining, instead of actually getting different colors you're just going to get different shades of brown. So that's kinda boring. Oh, and don't forget that if you leave iced tea sitting around outside of your fridge? It grows fungus. If you keep it in your fridge, it gets cold, cloudy and has to be warmed back up before it will work very well.

There's no doubt: buying tannic acid itself is better than using SuperTea. It stains less, it works faster and it'll probably last longer since it tends to grow less fungus. The downside to buying the acid itself is that it's not exactly cheap. Not expensive either, but not cheap. Further, most of my goal here in this blog is to document processes and solutions that you can easily (and safely) use from home. While tannic acid isn't particularly toxic, I like encouraging people to find alternative solutions. In this situation... I have to say, get the tannic acid.

Well, that was long! Know what? Imma split this up and do a whole different post on the processes themselves.

Toning a Six-Pack

Man, it'd be nice if the title of this post wasn't just a bad pun. Oh well. Actually, instead of getting bitchin' abs what I'm doing today is working on some cyanotypes. I'll be teaching a workshop on alternative processes at the Light Factory (check 'em out!) in the near future and it's got me wanting some examples of my own for cyanotype toning.

Yes, there are dozens of places online you can go to get good examples of cyanotypes being toned. I just want my own results because in the past when I've toned cyanotypes (and while at ECU I did every toning technique I could wrangle chemistry for) I haven't made side-by-side comparisons and now I really regret that since I no longer have easy, free access to bunches of random types of chemistry. My boss isn't big on spending money so that I can laugh maniacally to myself while wearing goggles, rubber gloves and a big black apron.

I just finished making four exposures, each 50 minutes long, of the same negative. Two of the exposures are already lighter than the others. Clouds, I'm guessing, since I do my cyanotypes outside in sunlight. I'm going to be doing examples of:

• Ammonia Bleaching
• Borax Bleaching
• SuperTea (Tannic Acid) Toning
• Ammonia + SuperTea
• Borax + SuperTea
• Un-toned
• Selenium Bleaching
• Dektol Toning

It'll take a few days to get all the results, since it's best to allow cyanotypes to fully dry (at least overnight) before toning them and best to let them dry again fully before scanning the images to avoid distortion from dry-down tonal shifts. 

I wish I had some pure Tannic Acid laying around, but it's kinda pricey. I might look at buying some, along with some soda ash, after the summer. Summer's tight on a budget when you're a teacher.

Straight Up Substrates

Anthotypes are pretty awesome. Why else would I blog about them so much? Well, boredom and an enjoyment of hearing myself.. type, I guess. But, they're pretty awesome, that's the point. One of the reasons they're awesome is that you have a huge amount of flexibility in how you make them. There are dozens or hundreds of possible dyes, each one can be diluted or applied in many different ways to create just buttloads of potential colors. But, under all that, there's even more choice! You get to choose what you put the dye on! There are many possibilities and each category breaks down even further.

Because of the sheer number of things you can put dye onto and let it fade back off, I'm only going to cover a few types of substrates, the ones that are most commonly used for anthotypes. Don't let that stop you from experimenting! Anything that takes a stain can theoretically be used to make an anthotype.

Paper: The most common substrate to use for anthotypes is paper. It's obvious, since that's what most photographs are produced on and an anthotype is a type of photograph. There are a wide variety of papers and choice does matter. I don't recommend using anything lightweight such as copy paper because it won't hold up well under the dye and it will wrinkle as it dries. You want a heavy-weight paper that's designed to take lots of liquid. Printmaking paper, watercolor paper and even sketch paper meant for use with inks will do alright.

There are many sources telling you about what kind of papers are best for this and that alternative process. Some of my favorite brands are Crane Kid Finish, Rives BFK, Stonehenge, Arches Watercolor and Canson Watercolor. I don't have as much experience with the printmaking papers, because they're rather expensive, but Rives and Stonehenge are both extremely durable, cotton-rag papers that will happily soak up your dye without deforming or tearing. They're my personal favorites for anthotypes. However, again, they're kinda expensive. So, for tests and experiments I prefer to use Canson or Arches, neither of which is very pricey. When you're just starting out, or using particularly weird dyes that you don't expect much from, Canson is the cheapest paper of the brands I've listed. It's often comprable to store-brand generic watercolor paper. Arches is much heavier, which is nice for durability.

A short note about watercolor paper: it comes in Cold Press and Hot Press. What those mean are that cold press paper has a tooth, or texture, on the surface. Hot press papers are extremely smooth. I'm a much bigger fan of smooth paper for anthotypes because it lets the most detail shine through in the print itself. You may like the texture of the paper itself, so you should probably try both.

If you're adventurous and don't mind getting dirty, you can even make your own paper. It's pretty simple, and comes out with a great finish. If done correctly and your paper mash is reinforced with some lint or fibers, you can get very, very sturdy papers. I especially like that when you make your own paper, it puts more of the process in your hands. You make the paper, you make the dye, you make the image. It's all yours. That's a nice feeling sometimes.

Fabric: After paper, the next level of advancement in substrate experimentation is normally fabric. I'll say that your best bets here are going to be natural fibers. I've used linen, muslin, wool and silk. All have given decent results. Linen has done the best for me so far. Silk doesn't like to absorb the dye as easily. Wool tends to snarl on the leaves and plants I use, though it's great at absorbing the dye. The linens I use tend to be fairly thick and heavy, with good texture. On paper, I like a smooth surface, but with fabric, I prefer texture because it helps add contrast. You won't get as much detail on fabric as you will on paper, so keeping to a smooth surface doesn't have much benefit.

I encourage experimentation with fabric, and I'm eager to hear the results of others trying fabric anthotypes. If you try them, please let me know what results you get!

Wood: Yep, you can use wood as a substrate. I wouldn't suggest plywood, but pretty much any solid wooden surface will take a dye pretty well. Wood likes to hold onto stains, so don't expect full fading. It'll be up to you if you want to surface the wood before applying your dye. Wooden panels or blocks used for painting, even gesso blocks, work just fine. A lot of your dye will slide off gesso, so be aware of that. You may need to lightly sand the gesso to get enough texture to hold your dye. Since gesso wont absorb much of your color, it's much harder to work with than untreated wood.

Parchment: Real parchment is animal hide sliced quite thin and was originally a paper-like writing surface. It's not cheap, but it has the texture and feel of the hide it was made from. Staining it with your dye will bring such textures to the foreground and can produce some truly unique anthotypes. However, vellum is a type of leather and it's not waterproof. It shrinks in water unless stretched and once wet will become stiff as it dries again unless you know how to handle it properly. I do not, so all my projects on vellum have lost their original elasticity and flexibility.

Leather: It's just as possible to use regular leather as it is to use vellum, but I have only heard of people using it for cyanotypes. I've seen leather used for anthotypes, but I don't know that the dye absorbs very well. Again, this is a place for experimentation. But, rest assured, leather is a possibility. I'd think the kind with a suedey surface would work best, since the suede will absorb the dye better than a slick surface.

Others: According to people I've spoken with working with cyanotypes, it's possible to print on just about anything. Unglazed clay and even bones will take a stain directly. It's even possible to print on plastics, glass and metal. To do so, you'll need to mix some gum-arabic or another gel agent into your dye to create a thick, sticky paste that can be applied to slicker surfaces. Just be sure whatever gel you're using has no opacity and no resistance to UV, or it'll slow the process of the dye breaking down.

Just as a note? Virtually all of this applies to cyanotypes as well as anthotypes.

Covering Coatings

This is going to be a short post, but I'm just getting back in the groove after my winter downtime. I live in the South and during the winter the sun is weak enough that an anthotype exposure that should take a week takes a month. It's rather distressing, so I tend to take a break from the whole mess. I was also fairy busy this Spring semester with my students.

But! I've got free time during the summer, lots of light and excess brain-juice so I might as well art, am I right? I am. So for today, we're going to talk about...

How To Coat Your Anthotype Paper!
There are basically two ways to coat substrates for an anthotype: brush the dye on, or soak the substrate in the dye. There are pro's and con's of both!

Brushing: This is probably going to be your default method of coating. It's easier to control, it's gets the dye on faster, it dries faster and it's cleaner. It also allows you to decide if you want to leave a border on your paper instead of having the color cover the whole sheet. I suggest using a foam brush, but some people enjoy using hake brushes. It's really up to you, but hake brushes are a lot more expensive and tend to shed all over. Also, you can get foam brushes in a wide variety of sizes! The benefit of a hake brush is that they can give very nice effects on the border and tend to give extremely even coats. Eh, I go for the foam; I'm cheap. I use a hake brush for cyanotypes, though.

Poorly Applied Single-Coat

When brushing on your dye, the evenness of the coat is important. You don't want to leave streaks and you don't want to coat too lightly; it will leave blotches where there's visible overlap of your first and second coats. This isn't going to affect the quality of your print, but it will leave very visible lines. Ideally, you'll get a perfectly smooth, even coat and no one will be able to see any brush lines or double-coat edges. If your first coat goes streaky, try adding a second coat after the first one dries.

Smooth, Even Coat

Don't overload your brush, whatever type you're using. Too much fluid in your brush will make puddles and drips inevitable. Puddles will give you the same mottled appearance that poorly-blended brush strokes will. Be gentle, brush slowly and lightly. Don't press the brush into the paper, just move it gently across the surface. There's no need to squeeze the dye out of the brush, it should be sufficiently saturated so that the dye glides out on its own, but doesn't drip off and ooze around. It takes some practice, but give it time and you'll have gorgeous, smooth coats.

Soaking: This is my preferred method of preparing fabric for anthotype use, but I don't like it for paper. In my experience, when you soak paper in your dye, the dye absorbs so fully into the paper that it takes much, much longer for you to get a good exposure. The pigment works its way into the fibers of the paper and that makes it harder for the sun to break down the pigment. At least, that's my theory. I'm not a scientist, so I can't explain it scientifically. I just know that when I test soaked paper samples vs brushed paper samples, the soaked papers take longer to expose and come out with less contrast because the exposed regions retain far, far more color if they've been soaked in the dye.

Now, for fabric, soaking is generally a better way. When soaking a fabric sample in dye, I like to fill a mason jar with the dye and drop the fabric into the jar, which I can then seal up and shake heartily for a good while to agitate it. I can leave it to soak for hours or days, shaking every so often. Sometimes, to ensure even coverage, I remove the fabric, wring it out in the sink and stuff it back in the jar in a different arrangement so I don't end up with a tie-dye effect. For paper, I use a flat tray full of dye that I cover with something opaque so light doesn't get in there and start exposing the paper prematurely. Again, agitation is important. I turn over my paper a few times during the soak using tongs.

Side Note: Dayum, this post is WAAAAY longer and more complex than I thought it would be!

There may be other ways to get your dye onto the substrate, but they'd be pretty specific to an odd substrate. For paper, fabric, vellum and leather, it just comes down to either soaking the material in your dye or brushing the dye onto the surface. If you have other ways, please comment and let me know how they work and when you use them!

I think next post will be about substrates and the different pros and cons of the ones I've explored, plus some theory on ones I haven't tried yet but have data on.

The Essentials of Extracts

In the last big series of posts, Rainbow Reverie, I collected notes and examples about most of the the various forms of anthotype dye I've experimented with. I've figured out at least one good dye for every color except red and I feel pretty good about that. Almost as important as what substance you use to create your dyes is the method you use to extract the pigment from the original material.

There are a lot of different ways to do this and each one has its ups and downs, so I'm going to cover the most common methods. Hopefully this won't be a very long post, but it should be helpful.

Blending
Use a regular blender (not one you use for food) to puree the substance and render it down into ooze. I suggest adding either water or alcohol to dry substances (leaves, twigs, dried berries, etc) so you don't burn out your blender. Don't add too much or you'll dilute the dye, but just enough to make sure the matter in the blender is reduced to a soup. This is my default method for extracting dye because it retains all of the object, including fruit skins which often have a lot of pigment in them. It also doesn't induce any chemical changes as boiling might.
Once you've blended the base matter down to a soup, you can choose to either use that soup directly as a dye or further reduce it. Reduction will be covered as its own method of extraction below because it tends to change the final dye a good bit. Keep that in mind. For comparison purposes, blending is simply that: tossing the dye-matter into a blender, adding fluids if required and using the resulting paste/soup as a dye.

Mixing
This method is only suitable for powders such as turmeric, woad, indigo, alkanet and madder extract. The idea here is that you take your powder and add alcohol or water to it in order to produce a fluid of whatever viscosity you want. The thicker the paste, the stronger your color will be. When working with powders, I find this simple method to be the best. It doesn't provoke any chemical changes, it's fast and it's simple. Why mess with a good thing?
Pay attention to your level of dilution and what you use to dilute the powder. Water will take longer to dry and give weaker colors. Alcohol dries faster and gives brighter colors, but leaves behind a lot more pigment that can collect on the surface of your paper and end up as loose dust. Trying to remove this loose dust can end up staining the whites of your paper.

Boiling
I have read many guides to anthotypes that suggest boiling your dye-matter before trying to extract the color. This seems to be a hold-over from textiles procedures where heat is actually required to cause many dyes to work. This is not true for anthotypes!! The heat helps the dyes work if they need to absorb into fibers. We don't want the dye to absorb into the fibers of the paper, that makes it harder for light to break it down. Boiling seems to break down the pigment in a few organic dyes, making them duller. I have also noticed that boiled dyes take much longer to expose. This could be due to the pigment already having been degraded by the heat or some other chemical reason. I'm not sure, I'm just reporting my findings.
I Do Not Recommend Boiling. It's rarely worth the time and effort involved, but there are a few dyes that just don't work without boiling. Mostly these are going to be dyes borrowed from textiles, like madder root. In order to extract the alizarin pigment from madder roots, you have to boil the roots. I find it much easier to simply buy extracts instead of the raw plant, but if you enjoy going through the extra steps, you're welcome to.
Your method of boiling will vary based on each dye you use. The basic idea is to use as little water as possible and watch very carefully to avoid your dye boiling dry. You'll end up with a brightly-colored soup, but the liquid is much more impressive than its stain results. Please, don't judge a dye by its color.

Filtering
This can be considered a Step 2, because it can be used on a dye obtained through blending, mixing or boiling. The idea here is to remove as much extra matter from the dye as possible to reduce the amount of debris or residue left from the dye-matter and get a pure liquid dye. You can use cheesecloth to filter thick pastes like blended berry or leaf mixtures but for the powder-based dyes you'll need to use something like a coffee filter to get the extra powder out of your dye. You can double-filter thicker mixtures, first using cheesecloth and then running the resulting liquid through a coffee filter for extra clarity. I've found this can be quite helpful because the cheesecloth (maybe mine is old?) lets a lot of material through.
Be aware! Filtering your dyes will make them less vibrant. They'll be very pure colors, but not very saturated. You'll get rid of all the residue and debris, but sometimes those impurities can result in some very interesting textures in the paper. I suggest filtering half of any batch of dye so you can do a side-by-side comparison and figure out if you prefer the filtered result with the unfiltered result. In a few cases (please consult Flickr for more details), filtering your dyes can change the color entirely, which is another good reason to only filter half your batch and do a side-by-side.


I think the next post will probably be about the different ways to apply your dye to a substrate and maybe touch on substrates themselves? That might be two posts. Who knows?!