Cyanotype and Bleach Print

The idea behind these pieces was to experiment with materials I hadn't used while also strengthening my realism skills. With my hair, I wanted to show the most realistic version of my hair that I could. I worried with my hair in a bun, if the details were lost, it would be hard to tell what was going on. This is especially so because it's not a hairstyle you see everyday, it's not easily recognizable. So, I wanted to make sure that it was as recognizable as possible. To do that I made sure that I kept my pencil really sharp and payed super close attention to all the highlights and lowlights as well as which direction the hair moved and how the layers were separated. In the bleach design I wanted to bring to life a character that is often in my head. This little guy gets drawn on so many of my school papers, so I thought that I would make him much bigger and make him almost a character by putting him on a shirt.

For the hair print, I started by sketching my hair with graphite pencil and white gel pen. I chose graphite pencil because it wouldn't smudge as much as charcoal might have, which was essential when I was trying to get all those fine little details. I also felt like once I started with the graphite, that the darks felt pretty dark, so it didn't feel necessary to add any more lowlights with the charcoal pencil. I tried to add some highlights with the white charcoal, but it didn't show up well on top of the graphite. That's why I chose to use white gel pen for the highlights, it drew cleanly on top of the graphite, and made really bright white lines that were super clear. When I moved onto printing it with the cyanotype fluid, I really liked the blue color. I had never done this before so I decided to start with watercolor paper before moving on to any other, more difficult materials. When I eventually did print it onto clay, the clay both didn't look quite how I wanted, and the print didn't come out very clear. The color of the cyanotype ink though reminded me of water, so I sculpted mountains that drained into various lakes. The sculpy clay worked perfectly because I could work it for days at a time without it drying out. For the bleach design, I chose a medium concentration mixture, because I wanted the design to be clear, but I also liked the look of the almost orange color that a slightly more diluted solution made. I wanted the contrast to be pretty stark still though so I chose a black T-shirt.

For the hair drawing I started with taking a photo of the back of my head. I tried to just sketch it free hand, but for the really realistic look I was going for I was having a hard tie getting the proportions correct. I decided I would print out the photo and use the grid method so that I could both get the proportions correct, but also so that i could focus more on the small details by zooming in on one section at a time. I used my photo for a spcail reference, but the photo was rather pixelated in the print out, so I just used the picture on my computer for the very fine details of groups of hairs, or very small highlights. For me the process of transferring my design onto watercolor paper was pretty simple and I didn't encounter many issues. I did notice that after I finished a lot of my prints were still a bit yellow which means I didn't soak them in water for quite long enough after I exposed the print. When I printed on the tile I used the sun for exposure rather than the UV light table so it was a little less reliable and resulted in having to wait weeks for there to be enough sunlight for the exposure to work. Even then though, it didn't turn out very well, with the design not showing up very well. I also had had to superglue my clay slab back together after it was fired. The places where there was glue resisted the cyanotype fluid which resulted in the print not transferring really at all. Overall the sun exposure did not work very well, the hair design did not really show up at all on my clay slab. For the bleach design I sketched out my design in my notebook, and then I drew it onto my shirt with a yellow colored pencil. I messed up the proportions a few times and had to rub out the pencil and redraw. The design itself all came from my head though, so I didn't really use and reference photos for this. I then grabbed a mixture that I made of a little more than half water to bleach because I liked the less light exposure look. I then painted on the outline, after that I felt like it needed a bit more and I liked the way the shading looked on some other people's so I tried the sahding on his stomach which I think looks pretty cool. I struggled a little bit with keeping my lines clean and sharp, but overall I think it turned out well.