Friday, October 05, 2007

September Cyanotypes

Below you'll find some of my recent finished cyanotypes. I want to take a moment to thank Marcia Treiger and Ellen Abraham for getting me involved with this process of cyanotypes. I am finding it to be an intriguing and fun process! Marcia and Ellen are two of my fellow ARTsisters, who recently gave me the gift of their time and expertise; they organized and ran a free workshop for any of us ARTsisters that were interested. I came, got creative and excited and had loads of fun!
I think they have created a monster! I can't make them fast enough! It's cool changing mediums once in a while. Keeps one's ideas fresh I think.


"Reeeach Up!"

One theme one sees in nature over and over again is the incredible way plants reach up toward the sun. (I did use real plants in this print; I didn't use the real sun of course!) That was created from a happy little mistake on a previous piece! Some water dripped accidentally on my paper after I had coated it and it dried with a blurry spot like the one you see here. Instead of trashing it (and wasting expensive watercolor paper!) I decided to play with it and experiment. Since it reminded me of the way the sun shines, I started to drip water on subsequent cyanotype prints while in the coating stage, on purpose this time! I'm happy with how some of them are turning out. I think that's whatcha call, making lemonade out of lemons!
Ain't art fun?!



"Dragonfly II"

Remember my recent blog when I told the story of the dragonfly that wouldn't let go of the tomato leaf? (If you missed it, just scroll down a bit - you'll get to it soon.) Well. I knew it would creep into my art somewhere! This image was created by first making a black-ink-on-clear-acetate drawing from the photo I took of the dragonfly, then I laid that down as my negative, but before exposing, I also added some real tomato branch leaves as well. That's how i got the two different effects from the leaf shapes. I'm considering adding a touch of color to this one,... or maybe not. What do you think? (You can add your comments below-click on the comments tab)


"Day Lily with Touches of Color"

This one took several steps. It started with a pencil drawing of a day lily. Then I traced over the drawing using black gel ink on clear acetate, this time, reversing the image, placing black lines over the white areas of the original drawing. This way, the end result would stay white in the light areas. Then I exposed the cyanotype, processed it (rinsed out the unexposed chemical) and when it was dry, went back in with some colored pencil.


"Cool Heat"

Here's another "fake sun" cyanotype print along the same theme as the one above ("Reeeach Up!") buy using different plants and composition.

Please, post your impressions about these prints. I'm anxious to hear responses from folks!
Thanks.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:44 PM

    Jeannie...

    These prints are amazing and the process to make them is neat! I can't wait to see what you come up with next!

    See you soon (hopefully!)

    Sara

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Sara,
    I am really loving the process! It gets me outside in the sun! And the possibilities seem endless to me right now. There's so much i can do with it - now to find the time!!!
    --Jeanne

    ReplyDelete

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