Pictures by Derek Bacon
Oliver Hardy cyanotype. On this one I didn’t use different thicknesses of paper to get the tones. Instead I used the same thick paper for all the parts (hair, face, shirt and jacket) but removed them in stages: the hair was the first to go, then the jacket.
Mrs. Slocombe—another cyanotype experiment. In the last picture you can see the paper template I used to make the print, and below that the exposed print just before washing.
Another cyanotype experiment. This time I tried painting something with the cyanotype solution itself.
On the first version, the plant faded to a grey-blue over a few days. Maybe it wasn’t out in the sun long enough. But the two dark blue ones look better—they each got a ton of sun.
Alan Partridge—a cyanotype experiment.
What I did was cut out various Alan Partridge shapes. The hair, jacket and tie use tracing paper, and the face and shirt are from thick (300g) paper. Over the hair shape I put some extra slices of paper, and on the glass that holds the whole thing down, I drew lines in the hair, the edge of the lapels, and over the tie.
The thick paper blocks almost all the light, but some gets through with the tracing paper, so you can build up tones in the image. On the best version, I then drew in Alan’s facial features with gel pen, biro and pencil.
Based on a screenshot from ‘This Time with Alan Partridge’.