Tuesday 30 September 2014

Sun Printing.

 It was lovely and sunny this morning, so I decided to have a go at sun printing with a new (for me) product from Jacquard called Solar Fast. First I had to make some negative images on transparent film. I wanted to use some pictures that I had taken of cracked and dry mud, but the photos had to be made very contrasty to be used for this process, so a bit of Photoshopping was required.
   Some Solar Fast was spread over a piece of cotton fabric and the transparency laid on top.
 I used Burnt Orange for this test, leaving the film in place for 20 minutes.  Unfortunately the sun started to go behind the clouds at this point, so it was really only intermittent sun shine, but the mud cracks showed up well on this sample.
 By the time that I got to the second trial the sun had gone completely, so I didn't get much of a print at all. This was supposed to be Teal in colour, but it does need the UV rays to develop the colour properly. The technique definitely has potential, but as I don't have a lighting set up inside, I'll have to wait for another good sunny day.

2 comments:

Mary said...

My friends and I have just recently decided to have a go at sun printing next month. We are going to use leaves and see what happens. But we are hoping we get a good, sunny day without the wind!
I remember having a go at it a couple of years back and that was when I realised that the earth turns around the sun - hard to get a good hard edge when that happens.
Your pieces have lots of potential, it looks like you could do all sorts of things with them.

mycamerandme365 said...

Thanks again Mary. I'm not convinced by these Solar Fast paints, although they do not alter the hand of the fabric at all, unlike using Setacolour, I'm finding that the colours are very variable. The Teal colour that I bought is a dismal failure!