Cyanotype Artist Jo Howell lets us see how toning with green tea works out

I made some split exposures whilst I was invigilating the Washington Old Hall exhibition on Sunday. I was there with my niece in tow so it was good to make some prints together. All the ones featured in this article were mine. The bairn took hers home.

I wasn’t massively impressed with my own prints so it seemed like a good idea to have a go at toning the particularly crappy ones. It can take a while to get back into the right frame of mind for creating decent split exposures. Over exposing is very easy to do and unlike a straight print it is much harder to rectify in the wash.

I had a three tray set up. Tray 1 was washing soda crystals with boiling water. This was my bleach tray. Tray 2 was super cold water with ice. Tray 3 was boiling water with 3 green tea and peppermint teabags. Cyanotype does strange things in heat. Usually I would do this whole process cold to ensure results but I wanted to see how the extreme heat difference would affect the process.

Interestingly the whole toning process was massively sped up due to the introduction of heat. The bleaching process happened within 30 seconds! Once bleached I plunged the print into the super cold ice water bath for around a minute. This was to remove the excess bleach from the print before toning.

The tea toning bath was still hot when I took the print from the ice bath and popped it into the toner. Again the toning process happened really fast! The whole print changing colour to a purple within 40 seconds. Tannins continue to cure and oxidise so you don’t want to over egg the toning bath. Any change you see will definitely darken down over a few days. So have faith! It may look pale but once washed and dried it will look very different.

This is around 6 hours after the process. It may go a shade or so darker in the next few days.

I have left over prepared paper from the weekend so I will have to use that up in the next few days. I will do a few more split exposures and tone them in a different type of tea. Ginger and turmeric gave a fab golden hue so I’ll pick some teabags up after work.

Do you like the toned print?

I think I would describe the colour as a purple-brown. It’s good to keep notes as you go along. I share mine via this blog. This is my reflection upon the kitchen science. A colloquial rambler of kitchen science.

What’s the nicest tone you’ve made or used?

I’m thinking that these will make cool collages once I have several hues to play with.

#tonedcyanotype #cyanotype