27th May 2012 Making Backdrops (Good Thunder and Urashima)

A bit of my garden, where we did the workshops.

When we finally got round to making the backdrops, we had spent quite a lot of time experimenting with the cyanotype on different materials, and with different things on top of them, however, as we found out on the day, the unexpected can still occur. 

We had great fun on the day and now have almost completed the Urashima backdrops - just some sewing and fixing to do, and are getting there with the Good Thunder backdrops, however the problem here was that with a mixture of being too sparing with the light, as well as using a cotton/polyester blend of material, and piling up the materials up very deeply, we ended up blocking too much light and thus didn't get the detail we wanted, as well as having two backdrops that came out brown instead of blue.  Nothing that can't be fixed, but we do have a bit of extra work to do before we start on the Badger Kettle backdrops, which will be very colourful and lively.

Becky was the leader of the Urashima group, and she started us off by getting 5 pieces of paper to represent the drops, and planning the whole picture.  She had cut out a moon and some moon ripples, and I had done a waves stencil.  Tony wanted to add a haze around the moon, and we used netting to create an effect of stars.  The effect was to be bleak and dark.  We used cotton sheets because it would dye darker blue in the sun, and left the sheets under the sun for the maximum of 15 minutes each time.

Eager cyanotypers striding out into the bright sunshine to prepare the space, each group was allocated a patch of grass, and planned their very different backdrops.  Good Thunder, to be light, cloudy and to have a castle and some plants reaching into the space.  Urashima to be dark, sparse and with a large moon in the middle.

Whilst the main design for the Good Thunder Backdrops was to be clouds, some of us also wanted a castle (the setting for the gods is "Castle of Cloud"), Kurtis set to work and within an extraordinarily short period of time had designed, drew and cut out a rather fabulous castle that would sit among the clouds - fit for The Thunder himself to live in!

It was very exciting going through all the materials that Sam had gathered and brought in, deciding which, combined with the cyanotype and sunlight, would create the effects that we wanted.  we had many materials of different levels of transparency - from see through plastic, which we could draw stencil designs on, to nets of different thicknesses, and card that was completely opaque.

Laying the stencils and materials onto the cyanotyped sheets had to be planned meticulously and done very quickly as the suns rays would start to bring out the blue of the cyanotype as soon as we opened the sheets to the light.  Everything has to be weighed down with stones or other object, to stop it blowing away - not forgetting that anything that blocked the sun from the cyanotype would leave it's sillhouette behind on the final design.  Toward the end of the session, as the sun had moved, I had to take my little tomato house down, as it was casting a shadow onto the sheets.

Once the sunlight blocking materials of various transparencies had been laid out, it was a matter of waiting - 5 minutes for the Good Thunder backdrops, as these were to be pale, and 15 minutes for the Urashima backdrops as these were to be dark blue.  We realised after drying the sheets that less sunlight had got through these materials than we had thought would do - a combination of using cotton polyester mix sheets, over estimating the amount of transparency in the materials, and the day becoming cloudy later on, meaning that the last two didn't dye blue - but rather a brown colour, like old fashioned photographs.  however, most of them turned out well and a distinctive sky blue with white cloud design was achieved.

Tony was Chief Sheet Washer, the water became a deep blue colour as he rinsed out the dye from the sheets, to leave behind the design.  This took a long time, and many baths full of water were run.

The finished sheets

As we planned, the Urashima backdrop is very dark.  Becky's moon and reflection stencil worked really well and the netting gives a lovely haze to the sea and stars effect.  the Good Thunder backdrops look exactly like a cloudy daytime, with a splendid castle sillhouetted in the distance.  Both sets of backdrops use a mixture of natural shapes and more stylised stencil designs.

Since making these, myself, Sam and Merv have visited Matt and Chris at the Gatehouse Theatre to check out the space and think about how the backdrops will be hung.  We've a bit more work to do before we can begin the Badger Kettle backdrops, which will be very bright and colourful.

It has been fantastic to be working with some new group members, Kurtis who came to these workshops, but also Suzanne and David who have turned up and joined in since.  Konnektiv is becoming a real hive of artistic activity.  Brilliant!