BLUE PRINTS/CYANOTYPE
First you need to get your chemicals. There is an online mail order company called artcraft at: http://www.nfinity.com/~mdmuir/artcraft.html. You want to buy:
Ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide
Store in non-metal containers (uh, don't be using the same containers that you store food in, please)
Mix up these 2 solutions separately:
Solution A 20 grams ferric ammonium citrate 100 ml water
Solution B 8 grams potassium ferricyanide 100 ml water
Right before you want to sensitize your fabric (or paper), mix equal amounts of solution A and solution B in a 3rd container. (Be sure to use different measuring spoons for each solution, or you will contaminate the batch and they will go bad before you use them again). You cannot store the mixed solutions, once its mixed you need to use it within the hour.
Use 100% cotton fabric. Put your sensitizer solution mix in a small bowl and submerge your fabric into it. Pull out the fabric (you should be wearing gloves here) and hang it to dry in a dark room (I hung a clothes line over my tub and left my fabric to dry there in the dark).
Once it’s dry, expose it to your negative. I used negatives created on the computer, and printed out onto transparency film made for laser printers. I know there are also transparencies made for ink jets. Put the negative on top of the fabric and then lay a sheet of glass over that, or use a picture frame with glass in it to be sure there is good, tight contact between the negative and fabric.
You need a UV light source to expose this. Sunlight works... try an exposure of around an hour in midday direct sunlight. I’m not a fan of using the sun because it’s variable (longer exposures for cloudy days) so I have fluorescent bulbs (use black-light-blue bulbs... these are white tubes that are labeled "blb" on them. not the black tubes that people use at parties and are called black lights). A cheap source of UV light is a 500-watt photoflood bulb, available at specialty light stores. I’ve heard that outdoor mercury lights work, but I’ve never tried them.
The fluorescent lights and the photoflood lights need an exposure usually of around 1/2 hour to an hour. As you expose the fabric, you can see the light green emulsion turn a dark grayish blue.
To develop, put in agitated water (like a running bath tub of water) for about 5 minutes until all the yellow stuff has cleared away.
The results are a beautiful deep, rich blue image that looks like it was dyed into the fabric, not lying on top of it.
all images © 2004-2005 Barbara Jade Triton
(Formerly Barbara Pucci)
To email Barbara, click here
Last updated: 9/2004
