No luck today. I don't know if it is the old chemistry, the uneven cloud cover, the paper or my negatives. Probably a combination of the old chemistry and not enough UV. When I mixed the A&B solutions, there was a murky residue in the bottom of the cup.
I need to build an LED box and order fresh chemicals.
Tried coating the two papers in the below photos; had no faith in the cheap, dollar store paper, but wanted to try it anyway.
Surprisingly, it probably would have worked out if I had got a good exposure on the paper. I put an Brownie negative in the contact frame with the "Crown Jewelz" Sketch Pad Paper, and the borders came out fairly even, but clearly not enough through the negative at 35 minutes.
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I grabbed the paper out of the water as the image floated off and took the above picture, but the image washed out completely in 5 minutes.
The Canson XL is practically blank because the negative covered the entire paper surface; only a few details managed to register and those pretty much disappeared with washing.
View attachment 361895 View attachment 361896
The Crown Jewelz is on the left, the Canson XL is in the middle and on the right. The rightmost bit of paper was a scrap I coated and stuck push pins through as a test strip for 10 minutes. As I said, the clouds are blowing through with pockets of bright sunlight occasionally; the test sheet was in full sunlight.
I kept checking exposures on the Canson, but it never seemed to increase beyond the density above, so I threw caution to the wind and processed them both.
BTW, all were splashed with Hydrogen Peroxide after washing.
All in all, not a success, but now I at least have a notion of what it takes to coat the paper and expose it.
Edit: the paper I used...
View attachment 361906
XL is a particularly "hard" paper meaning it is sized to retain watercolor on the surface longer. May be that's why student like it - if you make a mistake you can just lift it off. You might need to use a surfactant like T-20 which will help the sensitizer to sink in the paper better reducing the probability of it being carried off in the wash.
:Niranjan.
must have been the cloud cover
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I've had very good results with Arches Aquarelle Hot Press for both cyanotype and VDB. No sizing needed. It's by far my paper of choice.
The ascorbic acid kicks-in a sort of fogging and blows your contrast range; see below. The image looks highly solarized when it comes out of the printing frame. Actually, it looks better unprocessed!
I think ascorbic acid will convert the ferric iron in the sensitiser to ferrous iron, which is what UV does during exposure. Hence the fog.
If you want to acidify the paper, citric or acetic acid will do the job. I prefer acetic because any residual acid evaporates when the paper dries, but really, both are fine.
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