Week 2 Report

Dates:

May 16 & 18, 2017

Processes I learned this week: Making a digital negative and subsequent positive print (5.16.17), cyanotype (5.18.17), van dyke brown (5.18.17)

Notes on what I learned for each process, including tips, tricks, recipes, materials, failures, etc:

1. Digital negatives- first one of yuccas did not result in a good positive. Not enough contrast in image, was an exercise in color and light. Second one made of Coco with blind cast shadows. More contrast. Will use this negative for my first cyanotype and van dyke brown prints. 

Contact Print of Digital Negative
(note to self: rescan and crop out white edges)

2. Cyanotype- a. solargrams using Tim’s pre-cyan-coated cloth pieces turned out nicely. Left out for 15 minutes in high noon sun on lawn behind the lab. Used glass and crystalline items. Going for variations in translucency, both within a single object and between objects. I think these exercises turned  out nicely, got the effect I had been thinking of since making those initial photograms.

b. watercolor paper cyanotypes- got as far as coating a few papers with Bostick & Sullivan cyanotype solution (this is the brand we use in class) and putting them in the case to dry. Did not have time during evening lab to expose, had to force myself to do darkroom homework due for critique on Monday.  Still getting a sense for  how long things take, then my time management should improve.

3.  vandyke brown- same as 2b (I believe that we use Bostick and Sullivan chemicals for this process as well. Need to verify this).  Would like to try my yucca negative with this one. Also have a cool 35 mm negative of peeling paint that might work. Trying to imagine which images lend themselves best to shades of grey, brown or Prussian blue….

Or combining colors… have a few 35mm negative portraits of Coco, who is brown and white with one blue eye. She wants to be captured in the intersection of cyan and van dyke. Oh, yes, the two together reminds me of a successful wash that I made for one of my better life drawings last semester. It was a burnt sienna gouache wash over an aquamarine gouache wash, and the drawing was made using bistre and sanguine conte pencils, and white conte chalk. I should bring it in.

Other processes I worked with this week and notes, tips, tricks, and failures.

Ordinary black and white film photography. Hand developed and printed my first roll of film without instructor supervision during lab on Thursday night. A taste of independence!

Other information I learned from other students in class:

More inspiration than information this. Loved seeing Pam's Van Dyke Brown print of the nested bowls. Mike is a bubbling font of information on cyanotypes. Visited Stephanie's exhibit at U of M hospital on Friday. Amazing!!