Pressing Paper Problems

In an earlier post, I talked about substrates that can be used for anthotypes. I stand by the advice given in that post, except for one detail. At the very end, I mention that largely what goes for anthotypes also goes for cyanotypes.

Speckles on Arches 140 lbs

Whelp. That's not quite correct because you don't have to develop anthotypes. They don't get washed or anything, you just paint on the pigment and let 'em expose. That's it. Cyanotypes do have to be developed. They require at the very least a water bath of several minutes to clear the excess chemistry and expose the image. In fact, this should be a fairly extended bath to make sure there's no hidden chemistry lurking in the paper fibers. When you start wanting to tone a cyanotype, you're looking at even more baths. Generally at least four more: a bleaching bath, a rinse to remove the bleaching agent, a toning bath and then a final wash to remove extra toner. All that water is going to be hell on your paper unless you're using the right kind of paper.

If you're just printing a regular cyanotype, you're probably still clear to use most of the types of paper I covered in the anthotype substrate post. The cheapest types of alternative process paper (you want at least 100 pound) is going to be watercolor paper. It can be Canson, Arches or even a store-brand. I've had quite decent results on generic, store-brand 100-pound watercolor paper when printing ordinary, one-coat, one-wash cyanotypes.

Bleeding Edges on Arches 140 lbs

However, if you want to get complex with your cyanotypes and start bleaching or toning them, you need better paper. You're going to want to start looking at heavy-weight (150 lbs+) papers designed for wet media and printmaking. Rives BFK, Copperplate, Stonehenge, Hahnemühle, etc. These are papers intended to be washed and soaked. They feel like cloth, not stiff and hard like a watercolor paper. Printmakers often soak them overnight before printing on them. Water won't hurt them at all. These are the kind of papers you want to use for cyanotypes you intend to tone.

Extreme speckles on Arches 140 lbs

So, why am I saying all this? Well, because I bought a block of Arches Hot Press Watercolor paper (140 lbs) and I had an old block of Arches Cold Press Watercolor paper (also 140 lbs). When I tried using these papers for my cyanotype toning test sheets, the results were sometimes good, but I had numerous difficulties. Bleeding around the edges, strange splotches showing up during extended washing, odd starburst effects. These weird things didn't happen every time, but I'm not happy with them happening any times.  I want predictable, repeatable results each time I make a cyanotype. If I want weird, unpredictable behavior, I'll print my cyanotypes on vellum because, holy crap, vellum never acts predictable or regular. The skin itself is irregular and splotchy, so trying to get a consistent result is automatically futile. Fabric tends to be the same way for me, though if you carefully handle fabric you can get pretty nice prints off it, depending on the fabric itself. It might be that I'm using raw silk for most of my cyanotype prints (I love it soooo much), and raw silk is... uh, raw. Not fully processed, so it's got its own irregularities.

Anyway! To summarize: if you're going to be toning your cyanotypes, you have to splurge a bit on the paper. You want something that is intended to be soaked thoroughly and takes water really well. These are going to be your heavy-weight printmaking papers for the most part. Watercolor paper is designed for wet media, but only on the surface. It isn't designed to be submerged fully in water for extended periods of time and doesn't always react well to that.

You most certainly can use watercolor paper to save money if you're working with anthotypes or regular cyanotypes. You can get awesome results! I am not putting watercolor paper out of the picture. It just won't work in all circumstances. Sometimes, you gotta pay.


Oh! Wait! A last word! See, the expensive paper? It's gunna be what you want to use for archival prints. Part of the process in making a cyanotype truly archival is extended washing during and after development. This becomes triple true for toned cyanotypes. If you're not too concerned about archival properties (I rarely am), then you can get away with short washes for your watercolor paper cyanotypes. If you want the cyanotypes to be around in 2525 so that Cleopatra can be awed by your artistry, get the expensive paper.

Faded Glory

As I've mentioned previously, I'm attempting to fully document various cyanotype toning processes that can be done easily at home with fairly safe chemistry. My old alternative process textbook, by Christopher James, has a great chapter on toning cyanotypes. In fact, James has made the whole cyanotype chapter available freely online. So that's very nice of him, should anyone want to investigate his notes. He doesn't provide many examples, but he does cover some toning techniques that I will not be working with. Anything that uses gallic acid, pyrogallic acid, lead acetate or nitric acid is out for me since I do not enjoy working with powdered toxins.

This article by Suzi Varin goes into some detail about her experiences with James' toning techniques. She's provided examples of all his processes, except for the two violet processes he lists. I'd love to hear from someone that actually tries the lead acetate violet-grey toning; I'm not brave enough to try that myself.

In the last post, I talked a bit (a lot) about SuperTea vs. Tannic Acid. Now I'm going to proceed with talking about the toners themselves. I'll make some more samples and examples once I get my shipment of tannic acid from B&H. Until now, SuperTea is what I've got results from.

Soaked in SuperTea, then bleached in Soda Ash

Taking a second aside, I want to reiterate something that James covers in his chapter: all the processes I've come across for toning cyanotypes involve a bleach that breaks down the pigment. Then, you're using tannic acid or gallic acid to build a new pigment. The exact color will depend on what type of bleach you used to break down the cyanotype in the first place. There are exceptions, but that's the general idea. You can stop right after the bleaching process. Mostly, this is going to get you some kind of yellow or greyish result where the cyanotype pigment is broken down.

So, let's get down to the actual effects shall we? I still have to try getting good scans for Dektol and Selenium, so those results will come later. My detergent experiments need some work, too, but I've presented preliminary notes on that.

Borax: This is my favorite bleach, and its easy to buy. 20 Mule Team Borax is the brand I find pretty commonly at grocery stores in the laundry section. I keep holding out hope that I'll be able to work out a way to preserve the violet color produced by using a borax solution on prints. So far, no. The violet remains only while the print is wet and dries out to a pale blue-lilac color. The tone is distinctly different from an unaffected cyanotype, but you'd almost need to look at them side-by-side to see it. Let your print sit in borax long enough and you'll get a yellowish-grey color. The blue won't ever fully disappear as it would in soda ash, but it will get patchy. Borax doesn't like to dilute really well, so I tend to just dump tons of the powder into water until it hits the saturation point, then filter off any remaining precipitate. This saturated borax-water can then be diluted down later, if you want. The best thing about borax, aside from the transitory violet created, is that it does great with tannic acid. Borax-bleached prints toned in tannic acid will turn a lovely maroon with hints of brown. It's really nice.

Detergent: Basic laundry detergent. Supposedly this works because it has washing soda in it, but it has distinctly different results. This one has to be carefully watched. High amounts of detergent will destroy your image in short order. You can work with 10% solutions very easily and get good results. Now, by 'good', I do not mean dramatic. Detergent is a nice way to lighten a cyanotype without introducing a massive change in tonality. It will eventually turn your print somewhat yellow, but the color effect is far less pronounced than the other bleaches.

Cyanotype in 1:50 bleach

Bleach: Ordinary household laundry bleach for this one. Yes, all the toning techniques have some kinda bleach involved somewhere. Now, its super easy to use too much bleach. I found that a 1-2% solution is more than enough. If you work much stronger than that, you're bleaching reaction will happen way, way too fast. I tried 10% and the image virtually vanished before my eyes, with almost no chance at all to remove the print and wash the bleach away. Tannic acid added to a bleached print will give you some decent browns, with a hint of red. However the result isn't as dramatic as what you can get with ammonia or soda ash or borax.

Soda Ash: Originally, I learned of soda ash as a dye fixative for textiles. However, it's also a detergent that can be used for cleaning or added to laundry. Turns out you can buy it, very cheaply, as "washing soda". No matter what you call it, sodium carbonate is a dry, white powder and a strong bleaching agent. It will turn your cyanotypes bright golden-yellow. It doesn't take much of the powder to create an effective bleach, maybe 1-2 tablespoons to a liter of water. This bleach can be used to do a blue-yellow split, and it's very pretty, but not as well balanced as bleach. Soda ash really shines when combined with tannic acid, where it creates a lovely brown or reddish black depending on your process.

Cyanotype in weak ammonia

Ammonia: When you first put your cyanotype in the ammonia, provided the ammonia mixture is strong enough, it will turn brilliant violet. This doesn't last at all. In fact, it disappears so quickly that I don't even think it could be scanned while wet. The ammonia will keep bleaching away your image unless you wash it off. Washing it off removes the purple. So, you're kinda stuck. However, after the violet color is gone your print will start to bleach normally. The bleaching is a yellow-blue split, much like bleach, but it leans more heavily towards the blue and grey end of the spectrum. Ammonia bleaching is flatter and lower contrast than bleach bleaching. When combined with tannic acid, ammonia will give you a bit more red in your browns than bleach or soda ash.


For full examples and more details on step-by-step processes, check out this section of my Flickr!

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.

It's Been A Long Time

Test #4, most successful test!

Test #1

But now I'm back! Not from outer space, sadly. Today's topic is cyanovellums. I coated a bunch of different sized pieces a few days ago and have been slowly testing different processes on the resulting prints. Borax bleaching on cyanovellums produces a really interesting result: the blues turn orange.

1. No color shifts, but the bleaching turned the dark blue a mottled cyan-green, with large patched bleached almost fully away. The original image retained its blue color, but was rendered visible where previously it had been almost hidden.
2. The 'field' of the image turned a brilliant orange, and the image itself bleached fully out, leaving semi-translucent vellum without any coloration at all.
3. The 'field' turned orange as with the previous test, but the image itself retained a blue-gray coloration, a very nice contrast.
4. Results identical to #3

I haven't figured out what causes the difference between 1, 2 and 3/4. Oddly, 3 and 4 were bleached the longest, each one soaking for at least 8 hours. I would have expected them to leave no trace of blue at all, but they were the only ones to hold the blue color. Very odd.

Test #3

With the result for Test #1 being not very pretty, I decided to use it as a subject in my next test: two-step toning of cyanovellums. It was already bleached, so that was the easy part. I brewed up a solution of SuperTea! and proceeded from there.

To make SuperTea! I brewed 8 family-sized bags of Wal-mart brand Black Tea in 2 cups of water for 5 minutes in the microwave and let the tea steep for two hours. I then squeezed the bags to get any extra liquid out of them. The SuperTea had evaporated down to about 16 oz of liquid by this point. 

Test #1: post-borax and post-super tea

I allowed Test #1 to soak in the SuperTea! for about two hours. The vellum stained heavily, but the image redeveloped about as expected. It's now a very dark blue-black, with the image a more mild tan. No reddish color shift as experienced with cyanotypes that have this process applied when printed on paper.

I've got lots more work ahead with my cyanovellums, but at the moment most of my frames are taken up with six new Anthotypes that'll be cooking for the next week! So excited to see the results!