The first person that talked to me about resins coat on inkjet print on drawing paper was Marco Tardito (whom I also made an interview).

In the past I also tried myself printing on watercolor paper with my Epson 2100, but the results were terribly disappointing. Colors are completely wrong because standard profiles doesn’t work on artistic paper and black are almost grey, therefore the contrast is strongly flattened.

If the first problem is kind of easy to be solved, you just need a calibration device that creates custom icc profiles, the black problem is more complex. At its basis there’s a problem of excessive absorbing of the ink from the paper, expanding in its fibers and giving back flat and without blacks images. The ideal solution would be covering the background of the paper with a layer of some material that doesn’t allow the penetration of the ink. Well, in practice the paper for inkjet printer should be created at home. More than all of the sizing techniques, there are also pre-prepared products, such as Inkaid, a sort of paint which I was talked by Dorothy Simpson Krause in her interview and that, at least the producers say it, allows to print on each support.

It is a pity. Using fine arts papers is a very attractive idea. In general those papers are much more beautiful than the one for inkjet print and there is also an enormous, almost infinite variety with different characteristics available.

Inkjet print on Graphia paper. Let’s notice the contrast loss of the image.

I then got in touch with Marco Tardito and I was talked about a second possibility, that is painting after printing. After some time he brought to me in Paris some wonderful prints of still life (wonderful pictures as well) on paper like Rives BFK, heavy and textured, which means sponge for ink. Although this, black were the most lucid and deep ever, the prints brilliant and contrasted. A thick layer of transparent paint covered the surface, as some millimeters of plastic resin would have been poured on it (actually, the layer was thinner, but that was the impression). The irregular surface united the beauty of the paper with the beauty of hand-made objects. The only problem, in my opinion, was the horrible synthetic smell and an interrogative point on the print conservation in time.

Marco Tardito confessed me about his countless tests on paper and resin to find the right combination, therefore I tried myself. Seen the results, I’m far away from Marco’s wonderful prints, but I learned a lot about resins and paints anyway. Recently I’m mostly worried about photography and work than print testing, but who knows maybe one day I will take printing on watercolor paper more seriously.

Prints have been made on Graphia paper, an amazing, not too expensive, white and smooth Sicilian paper. Testing is not rigorous as usual. I just printed 5 or 6 different images and painted each one using 3 different resins: from acrylic to Arabic gum and a polyurethan paint. The followings are some notes about the experiments and the scanning of one of the images of the series. Scansions are particularly to execute, results should better be judged in person. Pictures are only reported as guide.

Acrylic

Acrylic painted print. White stains are the residuals of another print sticked on it.

Acrylic must be watered down, as it facilitates the preparation to every dilution. The solution has the aspect of a white viscous liquid, as a sort of vinavil diluted. It smells like ammoniac, but not so intensively. The seller told me that it doesn’t yellow, even after long periods; after two months I still don’t notice any kind of change. Half a litre costs almost 8 euros.

The acrylic, used directly at the original concentration, is really dense and thicken rapidly . It is much easier to coat the print when it is diluted one to one with water, but I’m still unable to make an even surface, without the brush streaks. Even with a dried, soft brush to smoothen the harshness, after the first coarse application (imitating the smoothing technique of the bichromate gum) it is hard to brush in a very uniform manner. When wet, the brushstrokes are white therefore particularly evident into the shadows; when it dries, they become transparent. The surface of the print keeps on being striped, evident if watching the print with a grazing light.

Probably acrylic should be diluted more and more to be scoated in an efficient manner or it must be sprayed with an airbrush. Anyway the seller told me that the less the acrylic is diluted, the more the acrylic is diluted the less the print is brilliant. Brilliance should be recovered superimposing more layers of acrylic. In this last case, we must verify that the successive layers will not soften and take away the past ones.

In about 30 minutes the print will dry, but if acrylic were working as all of the resins I used in the past, it would be better to wait some hours before the second coat.

The surface, even with some stripes of the brush, is homogeneous, in the sense that the stripes are regular and the effect can be lovable. The print is lucid and brilliant, such as the Arabic gum or the polyurethane, but I’d say blacks are less deep.

After some days, I put the prints one on the other and I put some weight on the top to flat them. All of the acrylic painted prints adhere one to each other; this never happened with Arabic gum or polyurethane. When I divided them, the part behind stuck on the picture behind. There’s no crease.

Arabic Gum

Inkjet print covered by Arabic gum.

Arabic gum can be solved on water as well, and this allows all kind of desired solutions. It is a sort of yellowish transparent liquid, characteristic that should warm the tints of the prints. The gum is practically without smell; the soft aroma is pleasant and natural, remembers about craftsmanship stores. A bottle from 1 liter up to 14 degrees baume costs less than 10 euros, turning the Arabic gum into the cheapest resin between the ones I tried.

I tried it directly without any kind of dilution, as all of my attempts with gum prints, knowing it would have been too thick. It is easy to paint with; the aspect of the humid print is lucid and nice. As far as it dries though, micro-bubbles born because of the paper absorbance, micro-bubble that can’t run away because the solution is too dense, making the picture surface irregular.

Probably this problem wouldn’t exist if Arabic gum were more diluted. Another attempt could be adding some ethylic alcohol, as in the preparation of paper for carbon prints it sensibly reduces the presence of bubbles. Superimposition creates same doubts of the acrylic; I didn’t verify if other layers remove the precedents. Arabic gum could be hardened with a little addition of potassium dichromate, making it completely insoluble. The problem is that dichromate leaves a green dominant in the gum and is very toxic, therefore I rather renounce. It is useless to use gum, a natural product, when you put a highly toxic and carcinogen substance in it.

Even after a couple of months, the surface of the print is gluey if touched, but it doesn’t seem like dripping or sticking like acrylic, which is perfectly dried when handled.

The surface, from perfectly smooth, has been covered with cracks that follow the sense of the paper fibers. Although this, the effect is still delightful.

In the complex, this is the resin I prefer: no smell, natural ingredient, brilliant and deep blacks, kind of easy to spread out, centenary photographic tradition that confirm its stability during time. But most of all, looking at the pictures, it is the one that I prefer.

Polyurethane

Inkjet print with one layer of polyurethane paint. Let’s notice the irregular surface of the print and the yellow borders.

This paint is solvable with a classic industrial solvent, not water. It is in fact greasy to the touch. Though its transparency, it has a slightly purplish color. It has an intense and unpleasant smell typical of solvents. I bought the cheapest paint I found in a DIY shop, but the price is 9 euros for 250 ml, the most expensive between the three resins I tried.

The polyurethane paint rapidly penetrates the paper. Even a large quantity is quickly absorbed. The humid paper is the most brilliant, but when it dries the surface becomes opaque. Its drawing up is easy and uniform, even with a hard brush. If, with some layers of paint, I could create the right surface that will not be absorbed, this would be the perfect resin.

Unfortunately, once the surface dries, it becomes irregular, in some zone is matte and in some others lucid. Blacks are actually deeper but the surface is very rough.

After only two months the polyurethane layer turned visibly yellow.

Some weeks ago, talking with famous French palladium printer Jean Claude Mougin, we started discussing about cyanotype print hue. In that occasion, he said that when cyanotype tends to violet is because paper is probably basic and could contain a buffer of carbonates. As is common knowledge, cyanotypes prefer an acid environment and preserving them in a basic environment could harm their life span. Therefore, it should be better to avoid basic paper.

I tested several cyanotype papers and cheap drawing papers are my favorite; the nice watercolor paper, neutral and 100% cotton, gave inferior visual results. In particular, drawing papers have a violet tone that I found more agreeable than the cyan of the more noble ones.

Therefore I suppose those papers contain a buffer of carbonates and this could harm the life span of prints.

The development I use is more acid though, so I hope this can neutralize the paper buffer.

Dick Arentz, in his book about platinum print, another technique adapted to acid environment, explains that on modern papers, which almost all contains carbonates buffer, a double coating of sensitizer highly augment the tirage quality. Dick Arentz speculates on the fact that the first coating could be necessary to neutralize the carbonates on paper and prepare a correct environment to receive the second coating. On the other hand, pre-acidification baths practice is well known to every platinum and palladium printers, a coating of acid solution such as the palladium sensitizer equals to a mild pre-acidification, so the theory seems to make sense. In every case, if a first coating of product does help to neutralize the buffer, 10 minute of washing in an acid bath should be more than sufficient to guarantee a not excessively alkaline environment.

Moreover the majority of my cyanotypes are toned to tea with a final alkaline bath. In Mike Ware’s cyanotype book “ferric gallate” and “ferric tannate” are two stable compounds. And they are the compounds contained inside inks used for 2000 years; medieval books are written with the same product contained in cyanotype toning. This is exact only when tannic acid and sodium carbonate are mixed, and not through more complex chemistries such as a cyanotype on a paper with a buffer toned to tea. Anyway I think that the presence of an alkaline buffer doesn’t modify the product present in the print, therefore the preservation of my prints should be relatively long.

Unfortunately, the practice to add a buffer inside paper is recent, so I don’t think there’s a right and satisfying answer to cyanotype storage on modern papers. Cyanotypes I prepared some months ago didn’t move, maybe in ten years I’ll be more serene, nevertheless I’m optimistic.

Cyanotype is known to be stable as platinum or pigment prints, so I don’t think it is terribly sensitive. Tone in presence of buffer should ameliorate the stability compared to a normal cyanotype. Moreover, I’m not extremely interested into conservation problem; if my prints surpass 50 years, I’m satisfied. If it’s 100 or 500 years, well it doesn’t matter to me. I’m interested into reaching the soul of my contemporaries, during my life, what happens next I don’t care. It would be a problem if in 5 months all the prints would turn into green, as with inkjet prints of some years ago. But when a procedure guarantees some decades of life, well I’m completely satisfied.

So I will keep on printing cyanotypes on papers that have a violet tone, so sweet compared to the saturated and brilliant obtained on more neutral papers.

During last weekend I personally tested several types of paper to print in cyanotype.

Requisites for cyanotype paper

The paper must satisfy all the following exigencies.

It must produce deep and almost black blues, not pale or washed-out light-blues. This is essential to get brilliant and bright blue prints, which would be consequently rather flat.

It must have a satin surface; as I’m contact printing 6×12 negatives, fine details become absolutely fundamental.

It must have an important weight to ensure flatness after coating. Papers whom embark too much, even if bone dry, gets the adherence with the negative hardly. On a textured paper can also not be a problem, but on a satin surface sudden appear unpleasant blurred spots.

The image does not have to fade during rinsing. Cyanotypes normally loose density during this phase. Some types of paper though release some filaments of blue during the first minutes of washing. This generally produces a granular and irregular aspect, it makes necessary longer exposition and commonly generate less fine images.

It must be cheap. I’m very annoyed by watercolor paper that costs 5euros per sheet.

Naturally I have to like it. It must have a pleasant surface and consistence, but most of all produce the right print. This last point is highly subjective and personal.

Other papers used for cyanotype print

I printed on Gerstaecker Watercolor (orrible paper, excellent blues), Fabriano Artistico, Canson, Arches Platine, White Nights, COT-32. They all present a strong loss of image during first wash. Two kinds of paper that do not present this problem are Shoeller Durex 250g and an Arche paper which I do not know the precise name. Water doesn’t get dirty even after many washes and the image nearly weaken. The problem is that Schoeller embark with dishonor and Arche is too much textured.

Test for cyanotypes paper

I went buying some sheets of paper. The requisite of price and surface brought me to technical paper: C grain 224g, Lavis Technique 250g, Lavis Vinci 300g, Montval 300g, Miner Multitecnica 400g, Bristol Extra Vinci 350g. Prices go from 1,20 and 2 euros per sheet sized 50x65cm. Some of them are the most textured.

The test is not so strict, no Stouffer palette and no control to stop all the variables. I simply took 3 or 4 negatives and tried to obtain good prints. UV exposition varies from print to print and surely playing with time can amplify or reduce differences.

The other variables are more or less fixed: 0.1ml+0.1ml in one coating of “classical” solution on a surface 6,4×12,4 cm. As the paper is no more brilliant, I use a drier to eliminate any trace of moisture. UV exposition and 3 washing soaks of 1, 3 and 5 minute each. The first two are prepared with 1 liter of water and 1 ml of 80% of acetic acid, the last one with pure water.

Results on papers adapted for cyanotype print

All of the papers loose density. The effect is more or less prominent, but it could depend from different expositions. Normally the Miner Multitecnica is the one that mostly suffer this problem and that has the most granular print. However, 30×40 cm is an extremely nice print, even if it’s absolutely to discard for the little contact prints on which I’m working.

All of the papers print a deep, lightly violet blue, which I do found pleasant related to the classical saturated and brilliant blue of the cyanotypes. Montval is the exception, as it has a completely different color: it is a cyan more similar to aqua green.

All those papers, because of the high weight, are absolutely flat and stable. A pleasure compared to Shoeller.

They’re all satin, even if they go from the smoothest to the fine grain. Bristol 350g is the smoothest at all.

This last one is contrasted more than any other. Having a smoother paper can be useful printing analogical negatives, as it allows printing negatives too hard for cyanotype. A contrasted paper is maybe more performing with digital negatives. I will verify this hypothesis as soon as I can.

All things considered, Bristol 350g seems to be the satin paper more indicated to cyanotype print, mixing an enjoyable color, deep blues, a perfectly smooth and detailed surface, scarce loss during washing with a light granular effect. If we add the perfect dimensional stability, the high contrast (that could be useful to digital negatives too) and the fact that is one of the cheapest I tried, it’s easy understand that it will be my reference paper.