Sun prints

• Posted on 24 January 2025
• By Sabine I flowland
• Posted in Craft technique
• 0

Hier geht's zum ARTIKEL AUF DEUTSCH

 The Magic of Cyanotype 

_{by Sabine Barth, flowland}

Why do I love Sunprints so much? Somehow they contain everything that I like very much: sun, nature, water, experimenting, nice surprises - because you never know what will come out - and beautiful, feather-light images that are unique. Everything happens without hassle and comes about by itself. Very decelerating, happy slowlife.

Pressed flowers and grass are suitable for printing, but also feathers or even the dead moth that I recently found on the windowsill.

Making sunprints is somehow also a bit about discovering slowness.
 First the flowers have to be collected and pressed. I try everything I can get my hands on. During a walk in the forest, on the side of the path and in the meadow. 
When I put the stack of cookbooks away after a few days, it's always a little surprise how the pressed flowers turned out.

To expose, I place the light-sensitive solar paper on a solid surface. Then I arrange the pressed flowers on top. And so that nothing slips or is moved by the wind on the roof terrace, I cover the whole thing with an acrylic glass pane. I fix the pane and base with foldback clamps. I do this in the shade or indoors so that the exposure process doesn't start yet. You can also use a pane of glass from an old picture frame or a piece of transparent film.

And then I just put my Sunprint in the sun for a few minutes. It has to be really bright sunshine, it doesn't work when the sky is overcast. Exposure is not a matter of fractions of a second like photography, but rather a handful of minutes. Sometimes one more, sometimes one less.

Feel free to play around with the exposure times. Anything between 5 and 20 minutes works very well with pressed flowers and grasses.
 The longer it is in the sun, the more vivid the images become. Because the sun's rays gradually penetrate the leaves and flowers. But too long is not good either, because the images then become inaccurate at the edges.

I also really enjoy printing feathers. You have to be a little careful to find the right exposure time in the sun. Feathers are more sensitive than plants because they have such fine structures. Too much sun and the details disappear. Too little and they don't even come out. Delicate creatures.
 What I particularly like about the feathers is that their lightness is really visible in the sunprints. In my opinion, the prints of feathers usually look much better than the feathers themselves. Maybe because the white is so white and the blue is so blue. A little miracle simply happens every time.

The Magic Process – the great thing is that you can watch the images develop:

The light-sensitive coating on the paper gradually turns light brown in the sun. When the sunprint is finished exposing, I bring it back into the shade. The first exciting moment is when I take the flowers off the paper. You can already see a print and I think the picture looks really great at that point, really 3D-like. And everything just from the sun's rays.

Even if the image is already clearly visible, it is still very sensitive to light and should be put into the water bath quickly to start the development process.
 At the beginning I always washed the sunprints under running water. Now I've discovered that it works very well with a tub. You just have to change the water after a few prints. So the Sunprints take their bath for a while and develop their full splendor.
 As soon as the paper is immersed in the water, the image development process begins, a bit like a Polaroid. Just with water.

And then something totally fascinating happens, the picture turns around: what was previously brown becomes blue and what was blue becomes white. And that's why the image disappears for a moment and then appears again and continues to develop. The blue becomes bluer and the image becomes clearer. It's always such a beautiful creation process that I just can't get enough of it.

Finally, I immerse the print in an additional water bath into which I have previously added a little hydrogen peroxide. This acts like an accelerator and the blue suddenly becomes even richer and deeper. You can get hydrogen peroxide at the pharmacy and it is actually used to clean wounds. You can also skip this step, especially if you are doing sunprints with children. The finished prints will also darken on their own within the next 24 hours.

Then I hang the wet print on the clothesline, I can sit quietly in the sun, the development process is complete and the image is no longer sensitive to light. Most of the time the images are a bit wavy when they are dry. I put them under a few books or iron them flat.

It's that easy with Sunprints. And it's incredibly fun.

Here's a summary for you: 


* Place what you want to print on the solar paper and, if necessary, fix it with an acrylic glass pane.


* Expose in direct sunlight for 10-15 minutes in bright sunshine. This exposure time is also shorter for some papers, you have to try it out.


* Rinse the paper under running water or place it in a water bath. This is how the image development is set in motion. After about 3 - 5 minutes the development process is complete and the sunprint is ready.


* Optional: Finally, do a water bath with a little hydrogen peroxide (from the pharmacy). This makes the blue tone even richer, but it can also be done without it.


* Hang the paper up to dry and if it is too wavy, press it flat under a few books.

 Interested in sunprints? 

Check out Sabine's  sunprint workshops

Get your  Sunprint Kit , ideal for beginners.

All pictures on this page are by Sabine Barth.