Cyanotype - A process of photographic printing, used mainly in copying architectural and mechanical drawings that produce a blue line on a white background. This process is done without a camera.
During this lesson we created our own cyanotypes using objects around the school, imagining it was for a book called, "Objects around St Gregory's". First, we painted Potassium Ferricyanide and Ferric Ammonium both first diluted with water then mixed together in equal parts, onto a large A3 sheet of watercolour paper and let it dry in the dark. Once it was dry, we took it outside, then as quickly as possible before the sunlight started to develop it, we placed objects on top of the paper and let them develop in the sun. after about 10 minutes, we took them inside, rinsed them off in a water bath, and then placed them on the cooling rack to completely dry. The final result was a blue background with whiter areas where the objects had been. As you can see, my cyanotype didn't turn out very well as I chose to use objects that didn't lay flat over the paper, which resulted in not a very clear final piece. Anna Atkins Anna Atkins was born on 16th March 1799 and died on June 9th 1871 and she is a very famous photographer. This is because she was one of the first people to create an illustrated book using light-sensitive materials to create the pictures (some images are at the top of the page). Her book was called 'British Algae' and used it as an accurate representation of science at the time. She made her book with the assistance of Anne Dixon, Anna created albums of cyanotype drawings of her botanical specimens. She learned the cyanotype printing method through its creator. The scientist Sir John Herschel, who was a family friend. WWW: I used pictures to help describe my work and I wrote some information on Anna Atkins. EBI: I wrote a little more on Anna Atkins work and made my images bigger and more prominent. |