From: Scott Wainer (smwbmp@starpower.net)
Date: 12/27/02-05:21:02 PM Z
Hi everybody,
I tried Mike Ware's Cyanotype formula last night for the first time; with unsuccessful results.
The sensitizer went on beautifully (nice light yellow) with a hake brush; then turned a very dark green (no blue) when I dried it using a blow-dryer on the lowest setting. Thinking the heat may have caused the color change, I hung a new sheet to dry for half an hour in my film dryer with only the fan running. It still turned dark green.
I decided to try printing a negative anyway and after a 15 minute exposure the unwashed print looked very dark (virtually no details) and had what I consider a "creamy" appearence. The exposed sensitizer looked almost like dark blue cake icing. I washed it until the water ran clear; which brought out the detail (very pale) with fogged highlights. I noticed that the very edges of the exposed sensitized area there was a normal dark blue that looked like I had painted over in places with with a light blue wash of cake icing.
Perplexed, I tried coating and printing four different papers - Arches Classic, Lanaquarelle, Strathmore Aquarius II, and Johannot; with the same results. The first set papers I tried were double-sized with gelatin (hardened with glyaxol between coatings and before sensitizing). The second set of papers were without the additional sizing and showed the same effects but to a slightly lesser degree.
I went to Mike Ware's website and found this entry:
"The cyanotype sensitizer is a delicate test of paper quality - especially if the coated paper is left for some hours in the dark at normal relative humidity: any change of the bright yellow coating towards a green or, worse, blue colour is an indication of impurities or additives in the paper that are hostile to this process (and possibly to other processes as well). ..."
Ware then goes on to say:
"... The coated side should remain light yellow: if it has turned green or blue reject it, because the highlights will be chemically fogged, and look for a better paper."
Is the Ware formula that much more sensitive to the type of paper used than traditional formulas? Could the sizing, in conjunction with the sensitizer, cause the "cake icing" effect that I encountered? What could be the cause of the sensitizer turning dark green within 5 minutes of coating?
I would be greatful for any help solving these problems,
Scott Wainer
smwbmp@starpower.net
P.S.
As a side note: I was using both spectral density (orange) and black & white negatives created on an Epson 1280 using Dan Burkholder's methods. I did notice that even though I lied to the printer (told it I was using photo paper) when I used clear transparency film, the negatives came out very, very thin. I noticed that when I changed from gray-scale to indexed color that the image lightened dramatically. The image also lightened quite a bit when I applied the cyanotype curve and when I colorized the image to give it the orange color. Having a short attention span to working digitally, I created a gray-scale image, inverted it, boosted the contrast, increased the density and printed it on the trans film. In short I got a much better cyan print (barring the above problems) than I did using Dan's methods. Anybody have any idea what was going on?
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