Showing posts with label tea toning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tea toning. Show all posts

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Isaac's Cyanotypes









After all the research we been doing I thought to have a go and do it myself to learn the how to.


I ordered the chemicals from SiverPrint, a digital scale from Argos, "borrowed" some gloves from my work and bought some watercolour paper and tape. Simple. The trickiest part was to mix the solution A to the solution B in equal parts without the proper material.

After the first experiment I learned that the exposure times need to be of about one hour to allow for a good detailed image (which means that my first try, that was of around 30 minutes, was too dark and not very detailed) although the intensity of the sun is also a variable that not always works depending on the time.

I have done a few more after with a much better result. So, here are the pics of my experiments :)






After achieving a good result I decided to use another technique to modify the colours of the print. This technique is called Tea Toning and was used to give the print a brownish colour instead of the usual blue.

I prepared a strong solution (?lol?) of about a litre of water with 8 to 10 tea bags (normal variety, cheap Tesco kind) and let the print absorve the tea for about 2 hours. Different papers absorve the tannin of the tea differently, so it's up to you to keep on checking the prints until you reach the desired tone.