Sun Art

Sun*Art...fun for ages 6+.  I am well past 6 but I do like to have fun! Cyanotype paper is a light-sensitive coated paper that reacts when in the sun. It only takes a few minutes to react in strong sunlight, you remove your stencil or objects placed on top, rinse it in water and let the paper dry. 

First I tried a stencil. This is a sheet of cardboard with the Sun Paper, a stencil and an acrylic sheet over it, sandwiched in binder clips before taking it outside. The acrylic sheet came with the paper packet.

 Here we are after a scant two minutes in the sun. 

Same time frame, but this photo was taken under an awning to show how pale everything looked before rinsing in water. 

Ooh, this is interesting....

Uh-oh, not looking like much wet!

And here we see it darkening as it dries. 

Don't worry about the wrinkles. First of all, this is all experimental, but the paper is thin and should flatten when weighted under books for a day or two. 

I was going to try some natural elements but everything that should be green and growing is parched. The dry weeds that I might have tried just didn't look interesting. While searching for something else it clouded over, thundered and rained. Sadly, the rain lasted less than 10 minutes.

Before getting busy with dinner, I eyed the shells in a centerpiece and made this arrangement.

Again, roughly two minutes had the blue paper looking white. I didn't use the acrylic sheet with this due to the dimensions of the shells. I think the sheet is just to keep lightweight objects from blowing around. Because it was later in the day, the sun was on angle and the shells had some interesting shadows.

The irregularities of the shells weren't as distinct as I had hoped when I removed them from the paper before rinsing. 

I like the starfish but the others are rather indistinct. 

I've read that adding lemon juice to the rinse can change the outcome but don't know if it needs to be fresh or if bottled juice will work. Trying that and other objects such as hardware and sewing notions will have to wait for another day.