8 | CYANOTYPES
The sun has well and truly come! Here’s how to create some cool artworks
Before
As summer is here and the sun has appeared at last, you can use the brighter daylight conditions to create your very own homemade sunprints. But first things first, what on earth is a sunprint? Put simply, sunprint is a special type of UV light-sensitive photographic paper that’s based on the cyanotype process. You can pick this paper up online (www.sunprints.org) or from craft shops.
When you expose it to bright daylight, areas that block the sun’s light show up in white and the rest of the paper turns a vibrant blue. These blue prints have bags of character. You can either make prints of physical objects straight onto the paper or transfer images taken on your camera via a transparency sheet, which is the method we’re demonstrating for this project.
The beauty of this project is its simplicity. You don’t need a darkroom, fancy kit or even extensive knowledge of film processing to get started. Plus, unlike traditional photo prints, sunprints can be made without any photo chemicals at all, so they’re great to try out with enthusiastic children as an art or science project. See how you can transform your own digital pictures into authentic homemade photo prints using this easy process.
Generally, photos with high levels of contrast work best, as the final result will only be in blue monochrome. Images that are already in black and white lend themselves well to this technique, too. Avoid complex photos and those that rely on lots of tonal details.
This low-cost project will require a digital photo and a printer to create a negative to work from. Once this stage is complete, grab a bowl or tray filled with water, some sticky tape, sunprint paper and a piece of glass or Perspex – some sunprint kits come with this included, but you could always use glass from a cheap photo frame. Then, choose a sunny day and when the clouds do part, you can expose, develop, then rinse the paper in water and watch a beautiful, long-lasting image begin to appear, as if by magic.
1 Convert your image
In Photoshop, convert your digital image: invert the tones by going to Image > Mode > Greyscale, then Image > Adjustments > Invert (or press
