One thing leads to another

 In my kitchen I have a dried seed head from an allium christophii, picked from the garden a couple of years ago and placed in a jug on the windowsill. I can often be caught watching the shadows it creates on the wall when we have some sun. For some reason the other day I picked it up and started looking at the marvellous construction of the individual flowers all radiating from the central stem. When in flower each of these is a tiny purple star, each of which dries to reveal the black seeds. I have only ever bought them as bulbs and would imagine they take an age to bring on from seed but once in my hand, I had to photograph it from all angles. It reminded me of an image I'd seen of a linocut inspired by alliums and I decided to capitalise on these rare, consecutive days of sunshine and get out the cyanotype chemicals.

 I wanted to do some cyanotypes last year but the weather was atrocious in 2012 as there was never enough light and heat to have a go outside , but I used my photos this week to produce some transparencies and then used these to get my images yesterday. You can see from the image above that I ended up with a haze of tones and a cleaner black and white image would have worked better, but the cyanotypes I produced are really rather delicate because of that haze and I think I prefer them to the usual clear blue and white effect.

 I have a box arrangement that I put my head in to coat the paper with the solution, trying to keep the light at bay.I'm sure I must look pretty odd but it is fatal if light gets in as the solution starts to turn colour immediately.  Once dry I quickly put the paper on a photo clip frame, put the transparency on top and then the glass, held on with bulldog clips to make good contact. Then I rush from the shed to the garden and prop the whole thing at an angle to the sun and watch it turn charcoal grey in colour. I'm sure it is an exact science in someone else's hands, but I just decide when it looks dark enough and then take it back to the shed and rinse it under water until it runs clear. I used some soft printmaking paper for the first time with them and that might also have contributed to the hazy look. I usually use heavyweight watercolour paper which stands up to the rinsing and the images are often sharper, although I then did these bits of bracken on the same paper and they are a substantially clearer image so it must be that the transparency was too airy fairy and not sharp enough. I also did a cyanotype image of my print exchange idea but as we're still winding that up I cannot show it here. Thank heavens I never decided to do seven cyanotypes for the exchange. Waiting for the sun to shine consistently here would have meant waiting a long time to get them done! These large fern prints are already the front and back pages of a japanese stab bound book, stabbed and waiting for stitching. Blue and white is so Japanese isn't it? The perfect way to use them I think.