MA-Ness Term 3 Week 13 Experiments with Anthotypes, Portrait Photography, Home Made Reflectors, Too Clever For Own Good Photocopiers..

this weeks post it note - can mostly understand and remember what I've written on it

anthotypes - pale but definitely something there and need to refine process

  

canvas pieces sent to Woodend Gallery in Scarborough for (hopeful) inclusion in their Wish You Were Here Exhibition
details here  

Attempt to create an image outline on leaves which failed, no resultant image at all - might give it another go if I can find a way of doing it on  living leaves as opposed to plucked leaves which dry out and don't take up the image.

It's been another busy week - getting lost in the process of making work is helping distract me from the current sadness I'm feeling and frankly I would be lost without it, thank goodness for the MA course for providing a framework in which to work out and work through the grief of recent events. It's not that I didn't make work before starting at the College of Art but since I started there I've developed a better focus for it as well as new ways to both practice and ways to think about the work I make too. I've often said that the course is a mindfuck and it is - but in a really good way and right now it is the best distraction imaginable.

This week I decided to experiment with anthotypes - which is a photographic process first created by Sir John Herschel in 1842. So by virtue of its date alone it warms the cockles of my victorian era loving heart plus as it involves no chemicals and only subdued lighting as opposed to the complete black out of a darkroom it is a process that I can carry out relatively easily at home. I am very mindful of the fact that once the course finishes I won't have access to a darkroom anymore so I am always trying to practice processes that don't need specialist photographic equipment.

It must be said though that I found it a bit of a faff extracting juice from spinach (and part of me was just wondering why I don't just go completely digital as that would be far less faff all round and the answer is because although I might moan about it - I love the faff side of things too - partly because I just do and partly because it makes me feel less fraudulent when I describe it as work) and though I wasn't entirely successful in not getting any green goo on the carpet I was successful at getting images on the paper as you can see above.

I extracted the juice by putting a couple of good handfuls of spinach in a cafetiere jug along with a capful or two of deionised water and mincing it (for what felt like ages) with a hand held blender. Once it was very mushy and liquidy looking I spooned some of the mush out into a paper coffee filter and squeezed it gently into a washed plastic yoghurt pot. This was when a bit splashed on the carpet....but it's no worse than the time blue printer ink got splashed on the carpet.

I then painted some of the juice on watercolour paper and let it dry - this was all done in my workroom with the curtains closed. Once it had dried I overlaid the paper with an acetate negative or positive, clipped it down and put it in the sunshine and then did some household chores. It was with some trepidation that I unclipped the frames (I'm using cheap hardboard backed clip frames with the glass edged with black electrical tape and bulldog clips) and took off the acetates but I was extremely pleased and excited when I saw that my experiments had worked.

Pale admittedly but definitely there and I reckon that with the refinement of the process - ie a couple more coats of spinach juice on the paper coupled with a longer exposure time (these were just over 3 hours)  they will be much darker and more definite. I don't know if they'll be slighter longer lasting though as all anthotypes unless kept in the dark do fade very quickly so I took photographs of mine and scanned them too.

I think I might try and do one and deliberately leave it out in the light to fade though - taking either photographs of it fading every few minutes or filming it on a digital camera. Not quite sure how to set this up or of what image it should be but it's on the list of things I want to work on over the next few weeks. There is even the possibility of taking the images of it fading on slide film, having them made up as slides and them showing it as a proper old school slide show with that marvellously evocative noise of the slides clicking round... an example of which can be found here - though of course for the full on past times experience I'd have to make sure that at least one slide was in upside down...

I also did a lot of paper prepping with cyanotype solution in the darkroom last week, I've mostly painted it on watercolour paper but also some on lined notebook paper and some rag paper I bought a while back from Paperchase which is very dense and heavy paper. I've been prepping a lot of images too so they can be used to make cyanotypes (upping levels and inverting them using the saint/scourge of photography - photoshop) so I have a lot of printing to do this week at college. Last week I did a lot of photocopying - £3 pounds worth. And whilst it was good to have lots of work ready to put in my portfolio for hand in it was also frustrating as the photocopiers at college are at times too clever for their own good. I was mostly photocopying grave rubbings I'd taken in St George's Fields a couple of weekends ago. As I did them with graphite they are a bit mucky and it will be easier and cleaner to work with the copies until I decide exactly what I'm doing with them. But at times the machine decided that it knew better than I did what size to copy them at - at times they could be fooled with placing a blank piece of A4 on top of what I was trying to copy and other times I had to call on the copier expertise of the as ever helpful library staff to get it to copy what I wanted it too.

Other costs I incurred last week were for litter trays (£10 for 4)  - just small ones as they will be just the right size for bleaching and toning cyanotypes, as they'll fit the ones I have made (none bigger than A4 so far) without having to be filled with a lot of liquid to get a decent depth. Unlike the developing trays we have which are much much bigger and won't fit in the bath so easily. I have a couple of cyanotype prints already that I want to improve by bleaching and just toning down the overly blue tone they have at the moment and some others I want to tone with tea to make them a kind of darker brown almost black cyanotype. I also want to make some to order just to tone. 

I just love doing cyanotypes - partly because I love the end result but also they suit me and my way of working so well as there aren't lots of nasty chemicals (one the solution has been made up - plus you can easily buy prepped paper too) and no exact timing needed like there is with traditional print making from negatives plus that does need a darkroom. But I would like to be more darkroom and print proficient - I've done a few that I'm pleased with but I don't find it as relaxing and fun as I find cyanotyping.

It was really nice when I nipped into the print room last week whilst waiting for my cyanotype solution prepped papers to dry that I was able to explain and share this technique with one of the print room technicians, I'd gone in to see if the technician was there who'd shown me basic bookmaking techniques to show her the tiny book I'd made of scraps but she wasn't and we got chatting about what I was doing...and also that they have a uv bed that can develop cyanotypes in 3 or 4 minutes plus as it's vacuum sealed it keeps the paper and acetate absolutely still so there is no blurring. A couple of mine have dislodged slightly as I've moved them to catch the sunlight so there are faint double outlines but I quite like the unintentional effect they've given them.

But that being able to share and discuss techniques (it was the darkroom technicians who got me excited about spinach as a potential photographic emulsion) is one of the other things I love about college - ie not just the specialist equipment and the library,and whilst I do get that a bit from having friends who are artists but I think there's something about an art school atmosphere that really helps with that - after all it's a place whose primary purpose is art creation so there is no hang up or embarrassment in talking about work whilst there.

The other thing that took up time last week was prepping for a portrait photography workshop I did for Darling Roses WI. I put together a powerpoint presentation outlining a brief history of portrait painting and how with the invention of photography and the recent rise in camera phones most if not all of us have access to some kind of image taking device, I showed pictures by some of my favourite portrait photographers - Julia Margaret Cameron, Madame Yevonde, Vivian Maier, Jane Bown and George Hurrell and talked a bit about the ethics of taking candid shots (and the ethics of whether or not Maier would have agreed with her photos being shown and sold), how to get your sitters (hopefully) relaxed so they don't have the rictus grin of a rabbit caught in headlights, and how to make the best of what light you have. I don't use flash very often as it think it can be too harsh, flattening and unflattering but I do try and use whatever light source there is in as flattering a way as possible.

In the Church Hall where they meet they have a opaque grey window and the sunlight that comes through that is gorgeous, we also used a couple of lights (desk lamps from Ikea) with home made reflectors (the hardboard from my cyanotype clip frames lined with white A4 paper - I made these thanks to a comment from a fellow MA-er when I said I didn't have any reflectors and she suggested using white card) and I also explained and showed the difference when you take photos at different angles and if you use a camera on a tripod or the kind of twin lens reflex camera that you hold at waist height as opposed to in front of your face.

The other thing I've been experimenting with this week is working with music, in the house I normally work whilst listening to R4 but as I couldn't bear to listen to the budget I put music on instead and I found I worked best to slower more contemplative music - Eno's Music For Airports and Marc Almond's Stranger Things and the soundtrack from Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive. Spongebob's Greatest Hits made me sing along too much to concentrate properly...think I'll do this more often, though today I am listening to old editions of In Our Time which all feature different aspects of the victorian period - so far I've listened to the one about Sensation Fiction and the one about Ruskin but I hope to listen to the others too - you can find details about them here.

The last couple of art talks I've been to (Project Nimbus and East Street Arts - What Role Does Research Play In Supporting Artists?) have included the use of overhead projectors - and in this izzy wizzy world of powerpoint and prezi it was a joy to see a more old fashioned and physical way of disseminating information. It was good to see inside the Live Art Bistro premises on Regent Street (the tiled narrow staircase down to the toilet is especially lovely) and there were some interesting points raised in the presentations and discussions too - which I'm still thinking about but best for me was the trip round their Patrick Street Studios afterwards - it was good to see different kinds of work and the different kind of uses of studio space. At present I have my workroom (or as it used to be known and function as 'the back bedroom') and though one day I would like a dedicated space that could function as a darkroom too - for the time being my workroom is enough.

Not just because financially I couldn't afford a studio space at the moment but also because I think it wouldn't fit the way I work at the moment, I like that I have a very easy short commute ie front bedroom to former back bedroom, plus I can do chores like washing and ironing whilst waiting for my cyanotypes to develop, the communal space is used by me, my husband and the cat and so there aren't arguments about whose turn it is to wash up and I can work in my pyjamas if I want to and it doesn't matter if I haven't washed my hair or put on make up (the latter I feel I have to do if I'm going to leave the house) and I can have whatever music/radio station I fancy on and I have all the benefits of home comforts...though this is tempered with the fact that undone household chores can taunt me too...as well as the fact that really the garden needs a bit of chopping back, and there are a couple of cracks that could do with polyfillering, there's still a pile of clothes to be taken to the charity shop.....

I sent off 3 of my matte medium to canvas transfer prints to Scarborough this week -(pictured above) here's hoping they sell....it felt quite strange to put them in the envelope, but also quite grown up to in a strange kind of way too. Might have to go back when the exhibition opens and see what they look like in situ.

I've developed some good working habits - like notes on a post it note round up blog every Monday, checking social media on the tablet thing before sitting down at the main computer to work so less distracted, printing stuff out as I go along so hopefully there won't be desperate rushing round to get stuff printed before the hand in date, sitting down to read books at the dining table with a paper dictionary rather than at the computer (less distraction) and I am good at labelling discs of scanned negatives and folders of scanned negatives now and storing them all in the one place on the computer (and backing them up or emailing them to myself - the original negatives are all labelled and stored in a full to bursting folder) but I didn't used to be so looking for old images can be a very frustrating unproductive time and this week I had to copy off Facebook an image I'd posted there a while back as I couldn't find the original, it was okay as it was for a powerpoint presentation but it wouldn't have been okay/good enough resolution if I wanted to print from it. Note to self - organise images more efficiently.....

I also want to work on titles, sometimes it's very easy to title something - especially if it is more of a document of something rather than a finished piece of artwork but I hope to use some of my collection of inspiring phrases and maybe also chapter titles from old books - partly because I love them (am absolutely loving Lady Audley's Secret by ME Braddon at the moment) and also because that way I do not have to worry about copyright and any potential discomfortt I might feel at using someone else's work is assuaged by the fact that they are dead and so cannot be cross with me for doing so....

   

MA-Ness Term 3 Week 11 Keeping Going, Tidying, Bookmaking, Catching Up With Myself, Grave Pictures/Rubbings and Modern F**king Bins.

this weeks post it notes with extra post it notes and bookmaking tool for smoothing edges (forgotten name of it and this isn't a bone one but a plastic one...want to get a bone one though )  

mini book made from stuff that would have otherwise been thrown out

cyanotypes in the wash - some worked better than others...

me doing a grave rubbing in St George's Fields - photo taken on 120 fuji velvia by husband on a Rolliecord from 1957 and then processed in garage...

Still finding life heavy going at the moment and generally feeling rather low but have been taking bit more easy by rearranging some appointments and taking time to concentrate upon doing things that make me feel more fulfilled - namely taking pictures and making stuff. And also by having some days in which I did precisely nothing except a bit of washing up and ironing and watching rubbish on the telly or dipping in and out of a book - am reading I Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson (recommended to me by a tutor) and it is very good indeed - delightfully grim and disconcerting and I am about halfway through now and I really hope Merricat and Jonas survive intact..... 

 Thankfully lurg seems to finally completely abated and whilst I'm a bit concerned that I have a few submission deadlines coming up - I think I'm going to be okay meeting them as I have rearranged some stuff for this week to make sure I can meet them without having to get stressed at the last minute though it is a bit of a bugger the college library being closed for staff development this week as there is loads of photocopying I'd like to be doing and I'm loathe to do it elsewhere as it is cheaper and easier at college....but it'll be fine to do it next week....when I was an undergraduate I always left things to the last minute and I was determined as a postgraduate that I would try and do things where I left myself time to do things at a pace that wasn't stressful and I try to be as ahead of myself as possible plus I'm also much better this time round at saying 'I could do with some more help and guidance on this' or 'I need to rearrange things' which also makes things much easier.

One of the biggest and on reflection most productive things I did last week was tidy my workroom - went through all the stuff that had accumulated at the lefthandside of my work desk and put all the out of date flyers in the recycling, sorted out all the pens in the pen pots by throwing out all the ones which no longer work, and so created some better more organised space to work in as well as just generally tidying up and sorting. Plus I can now sit on the sofa and read if I want without having to move piles of books though the end of the sofa is a more or less permanent book pile - but at the moment it consists of a much smaller pile of books I have finished reading but need to add to my bibliography before I put them back on the shelf.

However I have yet to properly sort out all the digital printing I had done the other week into my portfolio ready for hand in and that's a task for later this week I think. Hand in date isn't til middle of August but like I said for reasons of stress avoidance I like to be as far ahead of myself as possible with things.

But once I'd done some tidying I felt like doing something more traditionally creative and as the sun was bright I did some cyanotyping - the sun has changed direction so much since I first started doing it that instead of the kitchen window I now do them in the hallway and on the landing though they do also go in the downstairs back window too. I did 4 and am quite pleased with some of the results - I plan to colour photocopy them and then trim the results - so that I can remove the bits of my brushwork that aren't the best and then blow them up to A4 or A3 size. My brushwork has definitely got better but it still needs a lot of practice/improvement. I must make a date to go back to the darkroom and prep some more paper too. I must experiment with trying it on fabric too....my to do list never gets any shorter.....

I also want to copy onto acetate some of the grave rubbings (see picture above) I made on tracing paper with a big chunky graphite pencil at the weekend and so make them into cyanotypes too. Some of the remaining monuments at St George's Fields have the most heartfelt and laudatory inscriptions on them with phrases like 'fervid eloquence' on the monument of a preacher and I realised as I was rubbing that I could rub words individually and so make found poems in a sort of bastard offspring of the Burroughs/Bowie cut up technique.

Made 28 rubbings in total and discovered that granite monuments make for much smoother end results and it might have been useful to have had some masking tape to hold down paper at the corners when it got a bit windy and I don't like getting my hands dirty and I forgot to take wetwipes. Part of me wonders if I can ever be a really good artist as I am not good at getting my hands dirty - getting my fingers sticky with glue or paint makes me feels uncomfortable unless I can wash them clean again fairly quickly. It took a lot of scrubbing with the nail brush to get rid of the last bits of graphite from in and around my nails when I got home. But I am well chuffed with the results and am keen to go back and do more - on bigger paper this time...and maybe I'll wear latex gloves too....

St George's Fields is one of my go to places in Leeds for both a battery recharge as well as a place for creative inspiration - it is so steeped in its victorian origins and I continue to be fascinated by its overall history as a place and I also want to try and find out more of the individual stories on the names on the monuments there too - not the great big ones but the subscription graves that have been laid flat to line some of the pathways. Luckily my husband loves it too - and we decided we'd go on Saturday to take some pictures and have some lunch there.

I have two big learning points from our trip on Saturday - make list of what you want to take night before so that when you get there you have everything you need and don't have to go home and waste good light whilst you go home to pick the 35mm camera you were planning on using....even if it did give you opportunity to pick up tracing paper and graphite which you hadn't originally planned on taking. I took a little folding step this time too - which helped lots but my other learning point was if you are using props then it helps if you have an assistant to help you move things, help you carry stuff so me and my husband have come to an arrangement where we're going to take it in turns to be one anothers assistant.

I (finally) took 2 cameras my beloved Minolta 7000 from 1985 and shot a roll of Agfa Vista ISO 200 (from the poundshop) which I had developed and scanned later that afternoon at my go to place for ordinary colour film developing The Photo Shop in North Lane in Headingley and I also shot a roll of 120 Fuji Velvia using the very lovely posh medium format camera I've borrowed from college - got a few 'money shots' (see previous psots for definition)  but also learnt that my pale mauve organza sadly doesn't look pale mauve (one of the colours of mourning in victorian times) when photographed and the differences in the end results of the film pictures (didn't take any digital - not even on my phone) are astonishing - different shades of sky and green even though both taken at the same time, this is due to the difference in the quality of the film itself - not just in its original state and its age and storage but also the processing and the fact that they were taken on different cameras and in different formats.

And as for the 'money shots' I took I did have a Kanye West like confidence moment sitting in front of the screen last night looking at the ones I've taken recently and said to my husband 'I totally win at taking grave photos' as one of the ones I took of a victorian monument in the rain in Scarborough and I cannot wait to get printed up and he said it was because they are of something I love and if it's something you love then that love will shine through and so you get good work....and I think he has a point.

The fuji velvia was home processed in the garage by my chemically proficient husband and I then scanned it in. The grass on the velvia looks lush but a bit anaemic on the poundshop 35mm.... I hope to get some of the images printed up soon and some I've already post processed to black and white and inverted to make cyanotypes with....can you tell I like making cyanotypes?

I like it as a process for all sorts of reasons - that it rose to prominence as a technique in victorian times, but mostly that it's such a relatively forgiving process and you don't need to be completely exact with developing times - me and numbers don't get on at the best of times and so I find developing prints in the traditional way in the darkroom tricky where you have to be so much more exact timewise. Plus I have been trying out different kinds of coloured paper to paint the solution onto to try and get away from the all blueness of cyanotypes - am liking both red and grey but I've also been researching (after seeing Sharon Harvey's wonderful work you can read about it here) how to make different coloured cyanotypes so I need to get some washing soda, some coffee and find a couple more trays.....

Plus some of the acetates I've made to make cyanotypes with work really well as pieces of work in their own right.

And before I forget other lessons learnt - clean glass frame before making a cyanotype, and resize images in Paint before inserting them into presentations....and when making bookmarks out of the backing paper from 120 film - cut the sticky back plastic lots bigger than it needs to be as that gives you bit of wriggle room when it comes to putting them together.

Making bookmarks out of backing paper and leftover sticky back plastic aren't the only things I've made out of leftover scrap materials this week - on Wednesday in an attempt to both lift my mood and practice the rudimentary bookmaking skills I'd learnt the previous week I made a little photo book (see photo above) using offcuts of tracing paper, card and thumbprints of images. I'd printed screendumps of images I'm working on for my portfolio but I'd printed two copies by mistake so I cut them out and stuck them in to the little book I made with a drawing pin and some embroidery thread. I have a guillotine at home (got it from Aldi a few years back) and it's not good at coping with more than one or two pieces of paper at a time so instead I trimmed the edges using a scalpel on my lovely new cutting mat - need to work on my scalpel skills as well as my brush skills but for a first attempt I'm pretty chuffed with it. And as a former mentor of mine from the Place and Memory Project pointed out - 'there's not much that is more satisfying than making your own book'. I really need to get working on my memorial book next.

Not sure where I heard or saw this over the last few days (memory is like a sieve at the moment) and it was the point that people make art of what they fear the most - in which case I must fear death and loss the most and I'm not sure I do fear death as such - unless it is painful and drawn out - but I do fear death and loss of loved ones, and I do feel as a society that we should be a bit more open about talking about death - if only in terms of telling our loved ones what we want to happen in the event of our deaths and making a will. Mmm will have to give this more food for thought.

Costs for this week - graphite pencil was approx 70p, purchase and processing of 2 35mm colour films was £12, can't remember how much the b+w film cost to buy as bought it as part of a job lot from someone who was clearing out a load of film they weren't going to use and not sure how much it cost to process either and I'm not sure how much the velvia cost or how much it cost to process (both the b+w and the velvia were done in house - or rather in garage and workroom) and the matte medium and dylon image maker I bought came to just over a tenner. I also bought some mini canvases £3, a new paintbrush £2 and more plastic wallets £2. So just under £30....not too bad considering.....

The other thing I did this week was attend a conference at Leeds Met entitled Gendered Bodies in Visible Spaces - the keynote speeches by Marvina Newton on the Regulation of Black Womens Bodies and Professor Rosalind Gill on 'Love Your Body But Hate It T: Contradictory Subjectivities In Post Feminist Times' were enlightening, thought provoking and depressing. As was the workshop I attended on Subverting Corporate Beauty Ideals by Glen Jankowski and Dr Nova Deighton-Smith which involved looking at magazines and advertising and what a smack in the face that was - I haven't read the sidebar of shame in the Daily Heil for a very long time (weaned myself off it a year or two ago) nor have I picked up a copy of Heat in a long time and wow I'd forgotten quite how dreadful those type of articles and magazines are - with their ridiculously airbrushed figures - women with bits of their thighs missing, arms missing muscles and all manner of airbrushing and nip-tucking with a mouse. I suppose one bonus of most people using applications like Instaglam (as someone without a smartphone who doesn't make if any selfies I am high court judge-like in my ignorance of these things) is that everyone *knows* how readily and easily images are manipulated these days and in some ways this is just carrying on the process that in some ways started with portrait painters painting people in as flattering a manner as possible (hence Oliver Cromwell's alleged utterance of 'paint me warts and all' to Sir Peter Lely) and is in some ways linked to these pictures but even so it is still a smack in the face when looking at this kind of thing en masse - toxic culture indeed. Not quite sure how best to combat it other than to continue what I do for my own sanity which is not to read or look at that kind of toxic nonsense.

As it gets nearer to hand in time and what feels like the real end of the year I've been taking stock of what I've learnt over the past few months, what good working habits I've got into, how my work has changed and one of the things I'm really glad I did get into a habit of doing was this blog on a Monday - and I intend to continue doing it but it is making me think about why it's public and not private and what difference would there be if I made it a private one instead which I might do for year 2.....as ever much food for thought. Plus I usually tweet link to it on a Monday evening as that's when I've finished and published it but I retweeted link to it again on Tuesday morning and got twice as many 'views'. Perhaps this is something I need to be looking at too.... 

I also made some inroads into my book backlog last week - and started reading academic books again and making notes - still got lots left to read but it felt good to at least be making an inroad into the pile again which sits at the right hand side of my workdesk in its own box....and along with the Shirley Jackson book I mentioned I've also started Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon - a victorian sensation novel from 1862 which features bigamy, arson and murder and is very wonderful indeed so far.....

And finally - modern fecking bins, needed and necessary but some of them don't have spoil the views I'm trying to take in St George's Field, there is one at the end of the avenue of graves from the Cemetery Road entrance which is the bane of my photographic life...as what looks like a beautiful victorian vista is clearly not as there is a modern fecking bin at the end of it. Perhaps I shall have to extend my basic use of Photoshop from levels and inversion and watermarks to cropping out bloody bins........