Arches Aquarelle?

[ronlamarsh]

Has anyone used this 140lb paper for Salt or cyanotype? If so how did you like it?

[paulie]

nice for cyanotype, small grain nice colour.

van dyke , doesnt work well for me so i guess salt is the same

[Matthew Rusbarsky]

Best paper I've found for cyano.

[David William White]

I've used it for salt prints recently. That's the hot pressed 140lb in blocks. No extra sizing necessary. The 'rough' variant takes more solution to coat. Beautiful paper.

[samuelingram]

I have the cold pressed right here (I'm actually resting my laptop on the block as I type this.) I'll be doing a bunch of cyanotype tests on it tomorrow and I'm pretty excited. Expensive though.

[Hexavalent]

My experience with a few different batches is that it is highly variable - inconsistent sizing, pH all over the place. This may be a bad lot that ended up in stores around here - YMMV.

[samuelingram]

I conducted my first tests today. They were awful.

I think the fact that, after a week or so of sunburn-inducing weather, the sun decided to go behind the clouds didn't help me but...

The application of sensitiser was brilliant, the paper went a beautiful, even, banana yellow with no marks. Then I put the stuff in the 'sun' and instead of going blue it turned a nice dark green. Lovely colour but not great for cyano. I washed it out anyway and the green vanished, but the contrast is horrible, blurry and absolutely no detail, and loads of green blotches appeared in it.

My guess is that this is from the glue that holds the watercolour block together. When I tried Canson Monteval, my prints were great, just with some streaks of these through the middle. I think that the glue melts a little in the solution, and is dragged along the paper with it. I'll cut this off before application of the sensitiser tomorrow. I'm trying to use the whole paper because it costs so much, so I'm going right up to the edges.

Having this and a green exposed image, even if it did wash out to blue, isn't desirable. I also treated the paper with acid, which I find blurs detail in the final print. The green development would suggest that the paper needs acid, but I hate actually applying it. The blues that I did get were nice though. Shame the actual image was horrible.

So far, I wouldn't advise getting it. Hexavalent might be right in saying that it's variable. I bought mine from a very well known art supply chain in Soho, New York if that helps. If I were to get it again, I wouldn't get it from there just in case they got a bad batch.

I'm not about to write it off just yet, but I'm also about to buy some Herschel and Buxton. I'd recommend either getting the Aquaralle in sheets, not on a block, or just getting the dedicated paper from Ruscombe if the postage wont hurt your wallet too much.

[David William White]

Samuel: Cyanotypes are green after exposure, only turning cyan-blue after development in water, so don't discount your Arches paper on that account.

You didn't say if you've successfully done the same negative with the same A+B solutions on a different paper, but you want to make sure you've got a negative of sufficient contrast. You said contrast was low, and cyanotyping requires contrasty negatives. That, and the chemistry, I think, would be stronger lines of investigation.

For the 'loads of green blotches', that sounds a little like precipitate in your FAC solution. Also, I don't think the block binder is water soluble, so I'm not sure that could be responsible. About the blurriness -- did you wait till the print was dry? The fibres tighten up.

In general, I think the Arches paper in block is a very nice paper, and I would expect that the company is about as rigorous as any in maintaining consistency.

That said, Arches paper is expensive overkill for a beginner cyanotyper (-typist?), and far from necessary for making nice prints.

[samuelingram]

I didn't realise that the cyanotype should be, or are usually green after exposure. I've made about 40 so far, with varying results, and none of them have ever been green. They have all been a darker version of the blue that eventually composes the image. In fact, I am pretty sure that I have read that any change towards green indicates impurities in the paper.

I was attempting to do my first scientific tests to determine which variables produce the best overall image with the Arches, as I thought that given its reputation it would perform reliably. I used negatives that worked well with Canson Monteval, and had varying levels of success with other papers.

I use the Fotospeed pre-mixed sensitiser, which is the only way of getting the Mike Ware cyanotype (Or a slightly altered version of it) in the UK, as dichromates are highly regulated here. If the green blotches are precipitate in the FAC, then I suppose I could have gotten a bad batch. I'm not sure how common that is.

Like I said. The Arches was my first step in to more pricey paper, after getting mostly undesirable results with cheaper or beginner papers and so far I am having more trouble with it than I did with those. Perhaps I'll have better luck tomorrow.

[David William White]

Okay. From this and your other posts, it just sounds like paper is the lesser of your problems. Keep it simple, try traditional KFC + FAC, get calibrated on your negatives, and you'll be able to cyanotype any paper. Good luck!