Eco printing throughout the year – August

Today I’m comparing prints from my rusty roasting tin with prints made in a new roasting tin.

If you want to see my eco printing posts for the rest of the year type “Ecoprinting throughout the year” into the search box.

August.

Pot – Boil 1 – Rusty roasting tin, boil 2 – new roasting tin.

Water – Tap water with vinegar.

Paper – watercolour and cartridge papers

Mordant – alum acetate

Leaf dip – rust water

Plants – Cranesbill geranium, coeopsis, eucalyptus, fern, cotinus.

Cooking time – 45 minutes, turned, 45 minutes.

Blanket -none.

Images

Boil 1. – Images are dark due to the pan being very rusty.

Boil 2. – Images are lighter as the only iron present was the liquid used to dip the flowers and foliage.

Comparison.

Left print rusty pan, right print new pan.

Conclusion – Prints using the rusty roasting tin are much darker than the ones in the new roasting tin. Also I think the tiles that I use are so impregnated with iron they are making the prints darker. I need to use new tiles for very light prints. I like the stronger tonal values, the cotinus leaves came out out very dark and the eucalyptus printed well, you can even see the stoma on the leaf prints.

Ecoprinting throughout the year – July

July.

Pot – Rusty roasting tin.

Water – Tap water with vinegar.

Paper – cartridge, watercolour, mixed media paper

Mordant – alum acetate

Leaf dip – rust water

Plants – Cranesbill geranium, coreopsis, corn marigold, crocosmia, clematis, tagetees, cotinus, rose leaves.

Cooking time – 45 minutes, turned, 45 minutes.

Blanket – none.

Images

Conclusion – .

Coreopsis gave a good orange/ rust print. The purple clematis was disappointing, as were corn marigold and crocosmia lucifer which only gave a ghost print. The tagetee leaves printed well.

One of the papers ( top photo, middle bottom) looked as though the papers hadn’t been stacked properly, but I know they were. So I believe this was caused when soaking the papers in the bath of mordant where they don’t sit directly on top of each other.

I also made some prints using dye blankets, I will tell you about this process in my next post but here’s some of the prints I made using a dye blanket.

If you want to see more ecoprinting posts for the rest of the year type “Ecoprinting throughout the year” into the search box.