Cyanotype Success at last

I think we're on the right road at last. We've made several changes to get to this point. Using the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 helped. It's the first printer that didn't fight us every step of the way with software issues, density problems, refusal to feed transparency material and clogged jets.

Having a printer we could trust let us get our adjustment curves closer to right than they've ever been.

We also made a few changes to our procedure. We gave up on coating with a rod. We just couldn't get the dark blue we wanted. Now we use a sponge brush. We coat, dry a while and coat again. It may use more chemistry, but it seems to be working.

We had a mental breakthrough on drying coated paper as well. We'd been letting it sit, but today we hung it on a line. It dried with less puddling, and a lot more quickly as well.

We'd been using a small contact frame. It worked, but it meant we could only expose one sheet at a time. We liberated a flat board, found some foam in a iMac shipping box and repurposed a 16x20 sheet of picture frame glass to make our own contact frame.

We've grown so accustomed to failure that we were almost surprised that our efforts yielded exactly what we were after. Though we think we should have been at this point about a year ago, at least we are here now. We have a few photos to print to create a series, then, because we are apparently experts now we'll take on toning cyanotypes.

Board, foam from an iMac box and taped picture frame glass. It works.

Comments

Yellow stain on cyanotypes. Problem solved!

At last, a problem with a solution. When we first started coating paper with our own cyanotype chemistry we were getting bad yellow stains. It turns out there are two ways to combat the ugly yellow. One is to add citric acid to to the first water bath when developing the print. The easier way is to add a bit to the sensitizer chemistry itself. We'd done that, but it turned out we hadn't been adding enough. So now, the yellow you see in the above print is a thing of the past. One problem solved, eight zillion to go.

Hello Cyanotype, meet Hydrogen Peroxide

You've exposed your cyanotype print and it just looks weird. You put it in a tray of water, and it looks better after a while, but still not all that wonderful. You dry it and wait three days for it to oxidize, or you could do something really fun: drop it into a tray of water with a little hydrogen peroxide. Be sure so say "Bam!"

The joy of test grids and new printers

We were so excited to have the Epson CX 7400 as a replacement for the Epson 1270. Excited until we went to use it for the second time and discovered that the black wouldn't print any longer. We ran head cleaner, we tried the Windex on the paper towel trick . It just wasn't going to work. Heroic Eric™ came through with a different printer. A wonderful Epson Stylus Pro 3800. We were thrilled to have yet another printer to calibrate. But this time, much to our amazement, it went well and seems to have worked. We have our best test grid results so far. Here's hoping that translates to actual prints soon.

The Cyanotype Conspiracy

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