JANE NORMAN
photography
Cyanotype photography & designs
I've only been creating cyanotypes over the past few months. I used the process last year to create the Art in Poundbury's
'Sea of Talent' Christmas Exhibition artwork and poster designs, as it gave me the strong blues I was looking for.
My Mum then asked me if I'd create a Christmas card for her. Rather than get a card in festive reds, greens and golds (as she'd asked for!) she got a cyanotype - which she rather liked, which I then supersized into a print ...and haven't stopped since.
This, combined with the sea-themed artwork I did for Art in Poundbury - has spawned (or 'prawned') a whole new design avenue....with artwork and cards going as far as Singapore, Japan, and North America.
The cyanotype been around for a while - invented in 1842 by Sir John F. W. Herschel, who intended it to be used for reproducing mathematical tables - and technical drawings. Otherwise known as blueprints. Many people also used the process to create photograms of flowers, plants and seaweed.
Creating a cyanotype is a simple camera-less technique, from laying an object - pressed flowers, a cut-out design or a drawing on acetate - on watercolour paper painted with a solution of light-sensitive iron salts, exposing it to sunlight for a few minutes, then washing under a cold tap to be left with white and Prussian Blue images. The brilliant blue will darken over the next 24 hours or so, but essentially, that's it!
With my designs I've added to that process - I either do an entire design on acetate, or lots of hand-cut individual parts then create the 'raw' cyanotypes and photograph them, before cutting out each piece and putting them together like a layered jigsaw, in Photoshop. This allows me to alter the colour balance of some of the pieces to create pops of colour. I then hand draw the animals - the cat is just made up of lines of fur - and added to the image. These layers are then flattened and printed on Fine Art Hahnemuhle Rag paper to make the most of the blues. My pictures are for sale as cards and prints.
The cyanotype process is not an exact science, as you never quite know what you're going to get - and it doesn't always goes to plan! But when it does it's great.
I hope you enjoy them as much as I do creating them.
