Blueprint for design

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Making cyanotypes is a passion of mine, as you might have gathered. I use the traditional Victorian method as devised by Herschel in 1842, with contemporary twists. Of which, more later ...

More recently, I have been creating collages with print offcuts, forming Scandinavian-style landscapes.

Last month, I tripped over an article about works coming into the public domain, in this case, art from a Japanese Design Magazine Shin-Bijutsukai from 1902. (The Public Domain Review is a fascinating source and I can recommend their newsletter.)

The delicate patterns and motifs were simply marvellous and I began to ponder how I could incorporate them into a cyanotype. I felt Prussian Blue would work, especially as cyanotypes do seem to remind people of oriental art in a mysterious way. 

The concept of ‘Japandi’ is now a thing, if you read your house and home magazines, and it is well known that the minimalism of Japanese art is closely tied to the development of Scandinavian interiors.

The history of the design books is fascinating, originating in the 17th century. By the late 1800s, there was a cross-pollination of Japanese artists being influenced by art nouveau and ‘Japonisme’, which they then introduced back into their own culture, according to the Public Domain Review article.¹

First, I chose half a dozen of my favourite designs, featuring bamboo, chrysanthemums, blossom and willow. These I converted into black and white jpegs, which I reversed and inverted (a rough simplicification) before printing out as A5 digital negatives on OHP paper. 

To print, one simply puts the negative onto treated paper, secures with glass and then exposes to UV. The designs looked extraordinarily modern, in fact. For variety, I retrieved some prints from last Christmas that I had done using 19th-century botanical illustrations of camellias, which looked the part.

My next job was to produce some botanical cyanotypes featuring Japanese-inspired leaves and flowers, so I pressed budding twigs of willow, and picked blackthorn and cherry blossom for printmaking. A perfect spring project.

For further inspiration, I dabbled in googling 19th-century Japanese landscapes, especially ones featuring mountains and islands, for inspiration, and began to experiment with the cyanotype solution itself.

This solution is a combination of dissolved potassium ferricyanide and ferric ammonium citrate in equal parts. Normally, one mixes them in equal proportions and paints an even layer on the paper. Next, you create a composition, press it firmly under glass and expose to UV/sunlight. The ‘masked’ areas turn white, and the background turns dark blue. The process was popularised by the entrepreneurial botanist, Anna Atkins, whose work also graces the Public Domain Review. Indeed, her work turned the chemical process into an art form, and there is now an annual Anna Atkins day in her honour, with cyanotype artists from all over the world contributing to the event.

I needed some different effects that I couldn’t think how to do with botanicals or negatives. What if I used the solution almost as ink? First, I tinkered with dribbling the solution onto a sheet and, using a straw, blew rivulets this way and that. It worked particularly well on a sheet that had already been coated, with the rivulets looking almost blue-black.

My next thought was to water down the solution to create a paler sky. Many of the landscapes that I came across seemed to have a deep blue-black sky at the top, fading slowly to silver blue below. So, I coated the sheet as normal, but before it dried, sloshed (there is no other word) around extra water to dilute the colour. I added a ‘moon’, using a circle of copper foil, and once the print was finished, it reminded me of a misty sky above mountains.

So, sky, mountains, trees, blossom. The next component was the sea. So, I went back to the Public Domain Review for some ideas and found another gem, a delightful book featuring hundreds of delicate and inventive wave patterns.²

These were too fine to convert into digital negatives, so I had an idea. When doing modern ‘wet’ cyanotypes, you use diluted vinegar to create abstract mottled patterns. So, I poured some of the vinegar mix into a bowl and began to copy the wave patterns onto a precoated sheet using a fine paintbrush. I am not a painter by nature, but it seemed the best way to reproduce the curves.

Incidentally, I also tried using chalk pencils, but the effect was too chunky. Next time, I’m going to fill a cartridge with the diluted water/vinegar mixture and try my hand by drawing the shapes with a fountain pen. A crazy idea, but it might just work.

Once rinsed, the rolling wave patterns had the effect of devoré velvet or damask, with a charming 3D effect.

Finally, what composition? It seemed a good idea to create a landscape in portait form, if you my drift, as there are many precedents of the tall, slim format, from landscapes to screen panels.

Then came the moment to begin. I cleared the dining table and spread out all my Japanese-inspired prints and then, literally, began to tear them up to form steep mountains and blossom-filled forests.

There were so many layers, it took me some time, and I stopped periodically to take a snapshot of where I was at – in case a puff of wind destroyed the composition before it had been glued down. (The bitter voice of experience.)

Then it was done. I made a matching one, featuring a different moon and more blossom.

I don’t know what Anna Atkins would make of it, but I like to think she’d be interested in how it all came about. Cyanotypes are all about experimentation, after all.

After display in a local exhibition, I'm delighted to say that I have just sold one. But, oh dear! Now that means I’m going to have make another!

Today found me collecting the last few fading sprigs of blossom, scattering petals everywhere. Spring might be ending, but I have enough ammunition to keep me going through the summer.

¹ Images from Japanese Design Magazine Shin-Bijutsukai (1902) https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/japanese-designs-1902

² Hamonshu: A Japanese Book of Wave and Ripple Designs (1903)

https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/hamonshu-a-japanese-book-of-wave-and-ripple-designs-1903

³ Cyanotypes of British Algae by Anna Atkins (1843) https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/cyanotypes-of-british-algae-by-anna-atkins-1843