Cyanotypes and Canberra

I have just returned from attending a workshop at the National Library which was held as part of the Community Heritage Grants Scheme. Women's Art Register of which I am coordinator has been awarded a grant for significance assesment. The workshop was great and I learned lots of things about preserving and documenting. I spent a day on digitisation and the picture below shows a simple set up for photographing pictures.

I even learned a lot about my camera that I didn't know and it has prompted me to plan to go back and read the manual again instead of just pointing and shooting with the camera on automatic. Mind you when I took the photos today for this blog and the postcard one I did it the old way with me climbing up a ladder and shooting onto the kitchen bench.
I stayed with my cousin in Fadden and here is a picture from their front balcony, great views across the valley to the Brindabellas.


On Monday before I left for Canberra, Zoe and I got together to do some more cyanotypes, this is one I did last time we got together, the paper is kozo and the image was made with a positive and a negative of the pardelote photo we took at Mt Hotham.

I then had a play around with toning the cyanotypes, I had done it before by soaking the cyan in dilute washing soda but when I googled it I discovered that if you then dip in tea you get a much browner result.

These are the backs of some pulp paintings dipped in washing soda and tea for a short time, the cyanotypes are of very loose nests.

These are on some Korean paper that I was testing to see if it would hold together for some larger pieces, the darker one was left in the tea for at least 20 minutes and the lighter one for about 5 mins.


This is a photo of one of the nests I made, it would have worked better if I'd inverted the colours and used the negative instead of positive image however I do like the effect of just some of the blue being toned.

Yeah! The beater works

Well at last my beater is back working, thanks to David. It is still way too noisy so I don't like leaving it on for more than an hour at a time. I've beaten up some denim, haven't got any plans for it at the moment but I guess something will come to mind. I'm going to try beating some plant fibre without the cover on the belt and if that's a lot quieter I'll see if I can get a larger one made or the one I've got adjusted so the wheels don't bang on the cover.



The Contemporary Art Society has an exhibition on Herring Island and I'm thinking I might put something in, tossing up between books and 2 D work. Closing date is early Feb so I've got a few days to think about it. I haven't really gone back to work yet since hubby is home, next week he'll be back at work and I had better be too.





The pictures are of a butterfly that got it's feeler stuck in one of the flowers of the kapok vine in our backyard. I raced to get the camera then freed the butterfly by tearing the flower apart. We don't usually get such beautiful butterflies in our year. We have a bumper crop of flowers on the Kapok vine this year, I guess that's what attracted the butterfly but the sap is so sticky, must have stuck the feeler. Last year I cut all the pods off intending to make paper from them, I put them in a box in my shed and left them. The box was full to the top when I left it and now it's almost empty, I imagine I'll get lots more pods this year and perhaps this time I'll get to turn them into paper.

Mount Hotham holiday

I have just returned from a few days on top of the world at Mt Hotham and have included a few of my favorite photos.
Part way through last year I finally bought a digital camera, I'd been swinging between an slr and a small camera for over two years. I had a small polaroid digital of 1.3 Mega pixels which I mostly use for taking happy snaps to go on my website but wanted something better. I settled for something in between which was recommended by a friend who does a lot of photography. I've got a Panasonic Lumix with 10 megapixels and 12 x optical zoom this is the first time I've had a really good play with it and I was very impressed. I got some great photos of the many wildflowers

a couple of good ones of birds that were tiny and not that close,

a sunset, a storm and a misty night

and of course the beautiful scenery.



There was lots of evidence of the bushfires from 2003, many of the snow gums have yet to recover, some are just sprouting from the base of the old trees. Everywhere you look you can see dead trees and you can see just how close the fires got to the lodges.