Blogging for Thor: Geometric Progress

Hi Spiders. I'm sorry I haven't been posting lately, I've been working on other things. Like photography with an actual camera. I've also just been feeling a bit down lately. I do have a post tonight, even if it's a bit short.

Overall, the Silver Geometry Project is going well. I've pretty much got color control down, though I do want to experiment and find more colors to introduce. I'd love a more reliable green and a true black. Palladium might work for the black, but daaaang is it expensive. So I'm hoping to find an alternative. I can get pretty close to black by using a potassium salt and silver nitrate, but I'd like another option. My only green choices so far are under-exposed cyanotype (very fugitive) and solarized silver nitrate with a sodium salt (takes way too long, and is very dull).

The biggest challenge is creating the original pencil designs, the "geometry" that underlays the chemigram and photogram. If the geometry isn't interesting, even the coolest chemical reaction generally won't save it. So I'm studying a lot of geometric art. Deco, constructivism, and futurism mainly. Abstract expressionism... maybe. There are some interesting painters from the 60s and 70s that I'll probably take a look at.

I feel like the project is on a good path. I just need to push it further, and really have the designs and the chemistry come together perfectly. I've had a few successes so far!

Oh, and I'm really enjoying the small scale. I started with five inch squares, and then tried some three inch squares. Surprisingly, the three inch squares seem a lot easier to work with and create complex designs for. They're certainly easier to paint, but the mixing of chemicals overwhelms them more easily. There's just not much space for a chemical spill that doesn't become the focal point of the entire image.

Blogging for Freya: The Importance of Lite

Silver Geometry #1, kosher salt

Silver Geometry #1 (reprint), 'lite' salt.

Hello, Spiders! It's been a while, and I'm sorry. I've been having a rough spot. Hopefully things are looking better! I'm certainly being more productive!

Lately, I've been back at work on the Silver Geometry Project, because there's a few shows I want to submit pieces of it to. I think they work better as 'stand alone' pieces than my thesis work does. The thesis work needs the artist statement, the titles, and some context to really be understood fully. I think that's a weakness of the thesis, and I'm working on it as I research ideas for new pieces. Silver Geometry, though, has really strong images even if the conceptual framework is looser and less rigorous. So they're what I'm working on right now, and trying to push to shows.

While I have been making new designs, I also started to re-visit some of the designs where I like the drawing, but feel that the prints didn't work out. It's been interesting, since there are a lot of little elements that are outside of my control in the process. I've also been experimenting with altering how fast I work.

Silver Geometry #13, with most of the value variation lost

This week, I tried to create more variety of value by moving the photogram material around pretty rapidly. It worked out well, but the resulting values were so delicate (created after only minutes of sunlight) that all it took was a little hesitation and distraction for a blast of bright, direct light to nearly obliterate the delicate shading. So, while I like the idea of more controlled value variation, I probably need to do that on one print at a time, instead of shuffling my attention between several prints at once. I may also need to do that on overcast days, or even inside through a window. Direct sunlight just moves the reactions too fast.

In these recent prints, I've also been manipulating the chemistry more directly. I created some lighter blue colors by diluting the cyanotype chemistry with water. I forced the silver nitrate to turn violet and red instead of brown and black by using "lite" salt instead of regular salt when preparing the paper. Since "lite" salt is a mixture of 50% potassium chloride and 50% sodium chloride, it causes a dramatically different coloration.

Up next is really small prints made from scraps of the larger sheets of Rives BFK that I'm using for the 5x5s. These are about 2.5 inches square, so the designs have to be a lot simpler. I think that'll be a fun challenge. I'm also considering some 5x5s where the chemigram component is extremely simple, and all the visual interest comes from the value added in the photogram stage. It's been a super busy week, but I'm hoping to get a good bit done this weekend and next week!

Check back in soon, Spiders!!

Blogging for Freya: Fun with Food

Transference #2 – Orange juice, rice, milk, flour

Ugh, I'm getting so bad at this, Spiders! I'm supposed to blog for Thor! But I forgot entirely last week, and this week I was at game night. Sorry, Thor. At least Freya alliterates well with this week's topic! And, as a fertility goddess, she's more suited to a post about food!

My thesis project is going well. I've hammered out an artist statement that's concise and meaningful, I've produced a good start on a body of work, I've got lots of new places to go with that body of work, and I'm enjoying my work!

In short, I'm making 'chemigrams' with food, or the ingredients of food. Playing around with different bits of food science, baking, and cooking to produce chemical reactions that cause photo-paper to change color under sunlight. So, they're 'lumen prints' in that they're made on darkroom photo-paper exposed to sunlight, but they're chemigrams in that the only thing used to make them are chemically active, not negatives or inert objects. The paper does really react to the chemistry. Acids, bases, oils and salts all have distinct effects on the paper, aside from simply altering how much light reaches the surface.

The biggest problem has been that I have classes and work during the day, so I tend to leave home soon after getting up, and get home shortly before the sun goes down. That's made it extremely difficult to get much printing done. But the weather is finally turning sunny, and classes are almost over. I hope to get a TON of work done this spring and summer! I'm finally really excited about my projects, too. That's so important, because now I'm actually motivated to do work.

The failed baking soda / vinegar volcano print

My latest experiment was building a baking soda and vinegar volcano on a sheet of photo paper... it didn't come out super well. The baking soda worked fine, even created some nice patterns, but the vinegar turned the paper an unpleasant poo-like brown. I have some ideas on minimizing that, so I'll try the experiment again. Probably later today!

The next idea I have to work on is creating a webwork made out of the stringy bits on bananas (I'll have so many bananas left that I'll probably make banana bread) and the smaller stringy bits found on orange slices. The challenge will be to use the right paper. Since the banana strings and orange strings are so thin and small, it needs to be a paper that reacts to light quickly. Otherwise, I'm afraid that the light will burn through these small objects and leave a very low-contrast, poorly-defined image.

I may also give a shot at printing an image that's immersed in boiling water. I've done underwater prints before, so I know they work. Making the water boiling could be fun! I'll probably do that with something that I suspect will react strongly with boiling water. Maybe milk or yogurt, which may begin to curdle and burn? Or cheese, which may melt? It'll be fun! I could even freeze the paper ahead of time, and then pour boiling water on it while it's still frozen. I know if you do that with film it can shatter the gelatin base, causing a crackle effect. I don't know if that would be visible on photo paper, but it's worth a shot!

Blogging for Thor: The Shape of Things to Come

Silver Geometry Print #2: Silver Nitrate and Cyanotype

Hello, my lovely Spiders! I'm doing very well; I hope you are, too? Great.

Last week, I talked about beginning a new project. For the moment, I'm calling it "Silver Geometry" but that's likely to change since I've already made at least one image without any silver in it at all.

Step-by-step for
Silver Geometry #1

The biggest challenge so far is the fixed 2 day exposure time. With such a long exposure, the d-max of some chemicals is reached too quickly. If I want to preserve the colors created various levels of exposure, I need to work more quickly and then cover the area with an opaque block.

My first experiment using cyanotype and potassium dichromate provided a sad example of this kind of d-max failure. I was attempting to add rectangular areas of reduced exposure to the circle-based chemigram, but even leaving the opaque rectangles in place for 6-8 hours at a time, the exposure equalized so rapidly that no trace remains in the final image. There should have been four lighter areas intruding into the circular pattern. They're gone.

If I want to continue using faster-reacting chemicals like cyanotype and dichromate, it appears I'll have to create a color with varied exposure, get it to whatever tonality I want, then "seal" it by placing the opaque shape back over that area for the rest of the exposure.

There is good news, though! The first image worked out wonderfully and the
third image came out nicely, too. The third image hasn't got very strong shadows from the paper and tinfoil triangles I used, but it was enough to make faint impressions in the silver rectangle on the right, and to create a gradient in the uppermost cyanotype stripe.

The second two prints also showed the rather lovely potential from painting the chemicals next to each other, and allowing them to overlap and mix. I'm in love with what's happening on the third image where the silver nitrate and cyanotype solutions mixed together.

In the future, I'm going to be incorporating kallitype chemistry, possibly some toners, and experimenting with painting different salts onto the page to alter the color of the silver nitrate stains. This project is looking so fun, Spiders!

I'll be using Instagram to document the progress and layout of each print as I move through the stages of designing the geometric drawing, painting the chemistry onto the paper, setting up the photogram objects and then moving them around during the exposure. So if you want to follow me for updates, that'd be pretty awesome. I love seeing Spiders on social media!

Blogging for Thor: Physics, and Chemistry, and Geometry, Oh My!

Photogram by Lazlo Maholy-Nagy, for inspiration.

Last time I did a long-term project, it was about paper. I decided that I wanted to form a new habit. So for 251 days, I made a photograph of paper every night. It was a great experience, and I even got some nice images out of it. Some crappy ones, maybe even mostly crappy ones, but overall it was a good project. The core of the project was a set of four rules.

Since I enjoyed the project so much, I'm going to start again. Not the Folded Paper Project, but something similar. Another project with a strict set of rules, a time-table, and enough scope that I won't have to worry if each one comes out perfectly. I want that kind of structure and freedom. I'm trying, and so far succeeding, at enjoying art again. Hopefully this will add another dimension.

My thesis is all about food, so the exotic chemicals I've been experimenting with aren't appropriate. That's where this project comes in. I'll be using alternative photographic processes, whatever chemicals I find appropriate to use. So I can experiment with salt, cyanotype, maybe even platinum or gold! I'm giving myself a lot of room here to experiment with chemicals.

This project is going to be a lot more complex than the Folded Paper Project. I won't just be taking pictures. Instead, I'm going to be making mixed alternative process prints that combine elements of chemigrams and photograms. 

So, instead of a set of "rules" there will be a set of "steps."

• Step 1: Draw a geometric design on a 5x5 square of smooth-finish cotton rag paper, using light pencil lines. Only two different types of geometric shapes can be used (circles, squares, hexagons, triangles, etc).
• Step 2: Paint alt process chemistry onto the geometric design, filling in each shape with chemistry to create a sort of alt process coloring book. Chemicals from up to two processes may be used for this.
• Step 3: Layer photogram materials of varying opacity on top of the paper once the chemicals have dried. These photogram objects must also be geometric, and only use two shapes. At most one of the two shapes can be shared with the drawing.
• Step 4: Expose the print for 2 days. During that time, the print can be moved, and the photogram objects re-arranged.
• Step 5: Scan the final image.

I'll be setting up the first one of these experiments tonight, and exposing it tomorrow. I'm very excited to see how this works!

Blogging for Thor: Chemical Crossovers

Potassium Dichromate (K2Cr2O7): a rather nasty
but potentially beautiful little chemical

I really enjoy the ability of social media to bring together artists from all across the world. After posting yesterday's blog on the Alternative Photographic Processes Facebook group, I got some wonderful responses from Serdar Bilici, Johannes Schmidt and Mark Osterman. So, instead of sharing some of my own work today, I'm going to be discussing ideas from these fine folks.

Serdar informed me that he had previously made images using silver citrate, silver tartarate and silver carbonate instead of a silver halide. Unfortunately, he did not have any scans of these images, but he did say that he found them either too low in d-max, or too high in contrast for negative printing. Here's a list of what he said he used to create the different silver compounds

Silver Citrate = Silver Nitrate + Sodium Citrate
Silver Tartarate = Silver Nitrate + Tartaric Acid (maybe from cream of tartar?)
Silver Carbonate = Silver Nitrate + Sodium Carbonate (soda ash)

Basically, all that means that silver compounds aside from halides can likely be used to print visible images. I'm going to give these a try most definitely, especially since soda ash and cream of tartar are so easy to get. Sodium citrate is available from the university lab, so I'll be giving that a shot as well.

Mark Osterman discussed with me the fixing ability of potassium iodide. Previously, I had fixed several prints in 5.6% potassium iodide, but not noticed any significant difference in the result from the more traditional sodium thiosulfate fixer. If anything, the potassium iodide leaves a warmer tone in the fixed image, but both fixing processes remove a lot of the color from a salt printed image. Mark says that, in theory, a salt print fixed in potassium iodide should turn yellow as the silver is converted to silver iodide. He also recommended that I find a copy of Records of the Dawn of Photography, which is a published version of Talbot's early notebooks. Unfortunately, that book sells for over four hundred dollars and there aren't any circulating copies in my local libraries. I may be able to visit a nearby university (I'm in friggin Boston) and make scans or notes. I'll have to look into that.

The most interesting conversation, though, was with Johannes Schmidt. He told me that he'd run across some literature a bit over a year ago that suggested adding salts of organic acids to the standard sodium chloride and silver nitrate mixture used in salt printing could alter the color of the print. He mixed up solutions of potassium or sodium compounds of acetate, ascorbate, formate, succinate and tartrate. These solutions were applied along with sodium chloride to paper, which was then sensitized with silver nitrate. He also tested the effects of dichromate, iodine and photographic developer on the silvered paper. There are some truly lovely results, especially from the dichromate. In fact, I'm going to borrow some ammonium dichromate from the university and do some tests of my own with applying it to salt prints.

Who knows, maybe I'll give up on this whole "photogram" thing and just create my images through pure chemistry. Chemigrams are popular, right?

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?

Blogging for Thor: Viscous Fluids

I tried new things today! I've been researching the chemigram process since I attended a lecture at SPE by S. Gayle Stevens. The basic idea is that instead of using photo chemistry to develop an image made by light and shadow, you're using that chemistry to directly create an image through the tone and color shifts created by applying the chemistry to activated paper. Using different resists to alter the rate and strength of the reaction between chemistry and paper introduces different shades, and the paper itself can add colors based on further chemical reactions.

So I started thinking, "Well, isn't that just how a lumen print works, except without the photo chemistry?" And yeah, basically it is. So I decided to set out to do some lumen prints inspired by chemigrams. Since they don't use darkroom chemistry, I'm calling them 'liquigrams' but there might actually already be a word for them. I dunno. I Googled for five minutes and didn't find one.

So far, I've made three of these prints. I only have so many basins that I can make them in, and they require a good washing after exposure so they take a bit longer than normal lumens. Still, the weather's been nice and I'm hoping to do some this coming week as well. Today my prints were made using corn syrup, chocolate syrup, orange juice, milk, ice cream salt, maple syrup and strawberry jam. The best results (above) came from carefully planning out what I wanted the final result to look like. Pre-visualization is key, just as with all forms of art.

I strongly suggest anyone wanting to experiment does some tests to figure out which resist will cause which colors. In mine, the chocolate syrup tended to produce pinks and reds, where clear syrups or uncovered paper left the greyish blue. The yellow at the bottom of the above print comes from milk and ice cream salt combined. I got orange-browns where I applied maple syrup. Orange juice did not seem to impart a particular color. Once you know, generally, what kind of colors you can create, you can basically treat this medium like painting. I'm gunna have some fun, let me tell you!

Later this semester I may try involving the chemistry used to create chromoskedasic sabatier effects. I did a workshop (also at SPE) with Angela Wells about that technique and it is really awesome. I'd love to see how it combines with my lumen printing.

There will be two posts this week, because I've also been experimenting with lumen prints on ortho-litho film. I was introduced to the idea by John Fobes, and it shows some promise. That's for later, though. I want to test the technique with fresh leaves... or maybe fluids! Who knows! Anyway, so far my results with that technique haven't been particularly awesome. They require a good bit of post-processing to create strong images, and I'd rather accomplish that in-process.