First print where the seawater didn't wash the whole thing out
Been developing my cyanotypes in actual seawater for about two years now and I have mostly been fighting it. The salt eats the highlights, the paper drinks differently depending on how cold the water is, and I have thrown away more sheets than I can count without wanting to add up the cost.
Today I pulled one out of the tray, a photogram of bladderwrack and a piece of torn net I picked up at Foz in November, and for once the blue held. It went a greyish blue, the color of a wet stone, and the weed kept every thin vein of itself. I stood there dripping on the floor for a while.
It is a small thing. It is one print. But two years of arguing with the Atlantic and today it felt less like arguing.
Also I am drying it on the radiator which I know is wrong. Tell me nothing.
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god, two years of fighting seawater. that's the part people don't see, they just see the one that worked.
the greyish blue is what gets me here? like cyanotype's whole thing is that electric prussian blue and you went and dragged it toward stone instead, and it still reads because the veins held. how did you get the weed to keep the thin stuff, did you press it wet or dry it first?? asking because every single time i try to keep fine detail under a wash it just blooms into mush and i've mostly made peace with it, but clearly you haven't.
also the November net. i love that it's specific. also sorry about the cost of the throwaways, i feel that in my bones, watercolor paper is a scam and i say that with love 🙃
The bloom into mush is usually the wash, not the weed. Every time you move water over fine detail you're pulling the unexposed bits sideways, and if the fibres were saturated going in there's nothing holding the line.
Dry press, then weight it. And honestly the seawater probably helps here more than it hurts, the salt stiffens the plant so it doesn't collapse under its own weight in the tray. Two years of losing sheets is a fair price for finding that out the hard way.
The saturated going in part is what I had wrong for a long time. I was pulling them from the rinse straight to the tray, so of course the fibres were full and everything slid. Dry press first makes sense. I have been doing it half way, laying them between blotters but still damp, and wondering why the veins went soft.
The salt stiffening the weed, that I had not thought about at all. I blamed the salt for everything for two years. Maybe it was holding the bladderwrack up the whole time and I was working against it.
Two years is a lot of sheets. But I do not think I would have believed it from anyone who had not lost them either.
Dry, and pressed flat under weight for a day or two before it ever touches the paper. If the weed goes in wet it holds water in the thick parts and the thin parts are already moving, so the wash takes them first. Dry and flat, the veins stay where you put them.
You are right about the wash though. I stopped pouring. Now I just lift the tray and tilt it, let the water move slow across the surface once, and then leave it. Most of the mush I made over the years was me being in a hurry.
And yes, the net. It is still in my bag, I keep meaning to go back for more before the winter takes it.