Cyanotype how-to

I had a few requests for instructions on how to make the sunprints, or cyanotypes we worked with this year at Sabot. I studied photography in College, so I do have some background knowledge, but I think this is a very easy medium anyone could use. It was easy for the children I worked with this year, especially the group of three-turning-four year olds from the Garden room.
Here is some background information; wikipedia.org/cyanotype

I have never had any trouble with the chemicals in cyanotype printing. Of the two, (according to Wikipedia), one (potassium ferricyanide) can be mildly irritating to the eyes and skin, and the other (amonium ferric cirtrate), is a food additive present in the drink irn-bru. This is quite a coincidence since by older daughter is in Scotland and just told me about how good Irn-bru is!


Now, the easiest way to start would be to buy a sunprint kit, which has ready to expose paper or fabric. Sometimes these are sold as blueprint kits; it is all the same thing. For use at my school, I wanted to be able to control the cost and the size of the photos we made, so I elected to buy the chemicals and paint them on the paper or fabric myself.


You can buy dry chemicals and mix them with water yourself, which is a bit cheaper, but the easiest thing I found was the blueprint kit from ROCKLAND COLLOID CORP (you can shop around for the best price).
This contains two light tight bottles of chemicals, which are then mixed in equal parts to make the cyanotype emulsion that I (or some students) could paint onto nice paper or cotton fabric.


The chemicals are light sensitive, but not so much as the film we are used to. Dim inside light didn't seem to affect the chemicals as liquids or when painted onto a surface.


So, here is the step by step
1. mix the chemicals following package directions
2. In a darkened room, paint onto washed cotton cloth or paper (I used some acid free construction paper, tried drawing paper and muslin. Remember that the paper will be washed hard, so it should have some weight to it. A cheap sponge brush worked well for painting on the chemicals, though serious artists might not like this.
3. Let dry (keep out of light -under a table, covered with a cloth works)

4. Decide what the pictures will be. You can make photograms like Man Ray example, or draw on transparencies and use them like negatives. Printed transparencies work, too, but this is essentially a black and white process, so reduce pictures to grayscale or black and white for printing. Remember that the image will be a negative of the thing you lay down on it -black areas will be white on the print.

5. Bring the paper into a bright sunny spot (I carried the paper in a cardboard tube to protect from sunlight). It takes longer on a cloudy day or in shade.
6. Place negative or objects on the paper. The emulsion is a nice green at this point. The exposure starts right away. Watch for the background turning darker blue. You have to judge when the background is right, and pull everything out of the sun before the parts you want to be white get exposed.

7. Rinse paper under a hose or in a sink until all the green chemical washes away, and the water runs clear. The unexposed green areas should now be white.

8. Let dry (We hung the paper on a clothesline indoors -this is my friend Shannon)

Now, you can paint or draw on the cyanotypes, cut and sew them, or just enjoy them as they are! 

The last day of school picnic

Each year we have a final circle on the last day of school and then everyone packs off to a park for a picnic.

This year we travelled from the preschool over to our other campus for the party/picnic. Students had been growing sunflower seedlings in their preschool classrooms, and teachers brought them over to plant in a circle in front of the Stony Point main building. It was lovely to see the children, parents, and teachers working together to plant this little garden.

When we return to school, there might be bright, yellow sunflowers blooming to welcome the children to their new school home!

It's good to know staffers Sara, Marty and Irene are always there with a beautiful idea to bring us all together.

Summer Art Camp

This week we had an 'Art Camp' over at the Stony Point Campus. My daughter Zoe G. helped as we made giant masks inspired by the Easter Island figures, many prints in a 'stationary factory', and played with clay, paint and other materials. We also made "art bots" (see artbots on Teacher Tom's blog), and messed around with the little motors and battery packs from radio shack.
Toshi, with his engineer's mind, and Sammi, a new friend, tried out many inventions that could move. In the end, Toshi decided he liked a simple construction of just a motor and propeller. I will be sure to keep these machine/materials around in the future for messing about and tinkering.

(masks; Mouse, Giant Bug, Horse and Dragon)

What I've been doing

Packing up the pre-school getting ready to move across the river to Stony Point.
It was sad to take eveything down and say goodbye to the rooms and forest where I learned so much.

I am so happy that movers will carry it all across the river, and glad I've learned to pare down the materials I keep (though it still looks like too much to the minimalistic people, it seems). I hope all this stuff fits over there!

Robot and Photographer Play

Some of the Garden Room guys have been interested in Robots all year. They came to the studio recently to make Robot costumes for a robot dance/play. I played them Robot Parade by They Might Be Giants, and they danced a while (sadly, my video camera is busted). Then, they made the costumes and wrote this story. It is neat that Cooper, who did not like the feeling f his robot mask, decided to be a photographer in the play instead of a Robot. This is the group that has been exploring cameras and photography. There can't be many preschool classrooms where 'Photographer' is a common place role.

THE ROBOTS AND THE PHOTOGRAPHER

By Lucas, Cooper and Oliver May 24, 2010

Once there were 3 Robots and one Photographer. They danced along a parade. The Robot parade got too close to a volcano!

The Photographer got too close to the volcano and fell in. “Help me!!” he said.

The Robots would try to save him. They yelled “Photographer, climb out of the volcano! Climb up the side! We’ll try to catch you! We’ll try to save you!”

But he did not get out.

Later, when the volcano blew up, the Photographer blasted out. He went thump, thump, thump, back into the volcano, dead. Then, he blasts out again, dead.

Lucas the robot pushes his medicine button. Out pops a bottle of medicine.

The other robot, R2D2-O can open bottles! He opens the bottle, and the Robots give the photographer the medicine.

He woke up and said “that Volcano was bad news!”

The robot R2D2-O said, “Lucas the robot’s medicine bottle was really good!” Lucas the robot shut down.

THE END

Family Stories Exhibit in the 3rd and 4th grade class

The third and fourth graders exhibited the Family Story projects they have been working on this semester. I enjoyed seeing the wide ranging learning that came out of this investigation. The idea was that through investigating their own families and sharing what they were finding out with each other, a bigger picture of immigration and migration would emerge. Learning varied from geography, military and British history, ideas about transportation and the beginnings of settlement in Virginia and the U.S., and what it was like to live as a farmer or be an immigrant in the early days of this country.
The biggest challenge was to decide how to represent an aspect of their family, a 'family story', that could show something integral to their research. I especially enjoyed supporting children in finding the symbols that could represent the main idea that they wanted to show about their family. The collaborative process was immediate -students shared surprises and wonderings from the beginning of the project in January.


However, after learning a lot of facts and stories about their family, information had to steep awhile until something important could emerge. This was a wonderful process to help these older children with, and it took time for me to figure out how to support it. In many ways it was the same thing I do with pre-schoolers or College students, but it was also very different and in some sense it was like starting over as a teacher.


In the end, we saw representations of the role of charity in one family, bravery and love of adventure in some others, representations of how individuals bind together into a family, and also what it means for a family to have a basis in a very long history.

  My favorite thing to see was how joyfully the students showed their work, and the audience of parents, siblings and teachers viewed it.