Hello, this is my second cyanotype video tutorial and this one is aimed at older supervised children and adults
really just because we're going to be using chemicals and there is a bit of potential for some mess.
This is what we're working towards creating, these are cyanotypes
with the chemicals being painted on, rather than using pre-prepared paper.
It means that you have extra creative control over the image that you're making,
you can decide how big or small the background is and how visible your brush marks are as well.
This image is made from a digital negative instead of laying objects on top of your paper.
This is everything you're going to need to actually make the cyanotypes.
You're going to need some A4 transparent film or acetate that can go into a printer,
you're going to need the chemicals themselves and I'll talk about that a bit later on,
a brush or brushes,
you're going to need a hairdryer for the end of the sequence
along with a vessel or a jar.
You're going to need an apron and you can wear gloves as well,
a black lightproof bag,
a bulldog clip
some watercolor paper, which should be ideally a weight 300.
You're going to need some kind of clipboard, or it could be a piece of cardboard.
You're going to need an acrylic sheet as well
You're also going to need some kind of paper or cardboard that you can lay down in the background
to protect the surface that you're working on.
The two chemicals that you need to make cyanotypes are potassium ferricyanide and ferric ammonium citrate.
I've bought these in a kit form and they come in two bottles which actually have powder in
and you simply top up the bottles with water, give them a good shake and leave them for a few hours and they're ready to use.
Once you've topped the bottles up with water and you've left them for a few hours
then the next thing to do is to mix them together in equal parts.
I don't normally measure this out, I just pour them by eye
and of course remember, at this stage, you need to work in low light because what you're creating is light-sensitive
so if you do this near a window or in daylight you're going to actually damage the chemical before you've used it.
So it's really simple but the one thing to remember is not to overload your brush when you're actually applying the chemical.
All you really need is a very little bit that you work onto the paper, so I'll try and show you how that works.
So take your brush, dab it in the chemical and shake off any excess and then you're literally just painting it on like this.
When it starts to thin out, just work it into the paper so that you don't have any running around on there
and try to avoid any kind of heavy areas that look like they might be more densely painted than others.
Then once you've got that you can move on to the next stage.
Once you've painted on your chemical then you're going to need your hairdryer
and you really just gently and evenly dry the paper.
It's a good idea, once you've mixed your two chemicals together, to use all of that up
so I would suggest that you prepare lots of pieces of paper, and that's where your black bag comes in.
You can store all your paper in there and use it at your leisure.
So I'm just going to pop this onto my clipboard, like so
and I'm going to use the acrylic sheet to go over the top of that.
You might find that that's firm enough as it is,
if not, use your bulldog clip and just pop that onto the bottom like so.
OK I'm outside now and it's a fantastic sunny day, so perfect for making cyanotypes.
I'm just going to take the clipboard with the pre-prepared image on and pop that down into a nice sunny even spot.
Here's my cyanotype. You can see hopefully that it's already starting to go quite a dark blue here
and that will continue, it will get darker and darker and then it will kind of go a bit bronzy and that's when it's ready.
I think this will probably only take about 10 minutes, maybe 15. Best to overexpose a little bit so don't be worried about giving it too long.
Here we are, so I've given this 15 minutes after all, you could give it longer
but I think this is long enough to be able to demonstrate the next stage.
So you can see hopefully that it's gone much darker and now it has started to get a sort of bronzy tinge, especially along the edges here
and that's really a sign that it's cooked, that you're ready to go.
So I'm going to pick this up as it is and take this in to wash it now.
Here we are in the bathroom and I'm simply going to wash this in the bath with the shower head.
So I'm just going to take it out fairly swiftly
and you'll see hopefully what this looks like, you've got the impression there of the fern underneath.
So i'm just going to put that in here and give that a good wash with the shower head.
Cold water and fairly gentle
and you'll see that the blue is washing off
and this isn't exactly how it's going to look at the end, so don't panic
if it looks like too much is washing away, but actually this looks quite interesting.
So really I would just keep washing this until the water isn't blue any more, until it washes clear.
The print on the right is the print we've just made and I've just had that drying out in the sun for about an hour.
You can probably tell if I zoom in a bit that it's not as dark, it's not as blue as the one that I've made yesterday.
Over the next 24 hours it will become that rich blue colour and you can probably tell it needs flattening out as well,
so I would suggest just putting a pile of books on it overnight and that will flatten out nicely.
If you'd like to try making a cyanotype print from a digital negative you will need access to a printer.
You'll also need acetate that can go into that printer and you'll need to invert an image
that can then be printed onto the acetate.
There are loads of apps that will help you create a digital negative or to invert your image
so I suggest you have a look and download one of those.
Then once you've done that all you do is place the acetate on top of your prepared cyanotype paper
and expose it to light in exactly the same way.
That's it, we've finished, we've made our cyanotype prints.
I hope that was helpful, have a go yourself -
be brave, experiment, try stuff out and most of all, enjoy it
and thanks very much for watching.