Anthotype Printmaking: Making the Most of the May Sunshine

For May's instalment of my 12 Months of Printmaking project, I made the most of the sunshine with anthotype printmaking; these are sunlight photographs created using plant dyes instead of chemicals. With the sun finally out, it felt like the perfect month to give it a go.

What You Need

• Natural pigments (spinach, turmeric, berries, rose petals, really anything with strong natural colour)

• A pestle and mortar, or a blender

• Cheesecloth or a coffee filter or anything similar (I used a reusable cotton teabag)

• Thick paper (watercolour paper, printmaking paper, cotton rag all work well)

• A paintbrush

• Patience and sunshine

How to Try Anthotype Printmaking

1. Make your pigment. Crush or blend your chosen ingredient into a pigment. I tried two: spinach, and a turmeric and lemon mix.

2. Add liquid. Add a couple of drops of water. Most recipes call for rubbing alcohol instead, but I skipped that step since I didn't have any to hand and didn't want to buy some for a single experiment. The water worked fine.

3. Strain. Strain the pulp through a cheesecloth, coffee filter, or reusable cotton teabag to get a clean liquid pigment.

4. Paint your paper. Paint the strained liquid onto your paper, then leave it somewhere dark to dry so it doesn't start exposing before you're ready. I repeated this step a few times, building up three layers per print.

5. Arrange your objects. Once dry, arrange your objects on top of the painted paper. I sandwiched mine under a glass table to keep everything flat and in place.

6. Leave it in the sun. This is the fun bit! Put it outside, then do whatever you like while the sun does the work. Take a break, listen to a podcast, have a minor existential crisis... I revealed mine after just over 24 hours outdoors.

What I Learned

The spinach anthotype worked far better than I expected plus it turned out far more successful than the turmeric one. The results were soft, ghostly little botanical prints that I'm delighted with. Turmeric, on the other hand, was underwhelming on its own, though apparently a bicarbonate of soda bath can shift its colour? I didn't have any to hand to test this, so if you try it, let me know how it goes.

One thing worth knowing if you try this yourself: anthotypes are fleeting by nature. The colours continue to develop and shift with continued exposure to light, so what you get isn't necessarily permanent. I'll be keeping an eye on how mine hold up over time. Keeping them away from direct sunlight is a good start for preserving the print for as long as possible.

If you fancy an experiment that costs almost nothing, uses ingredients from your kitchen, and needs little more than sunshine and patience, anthotype printmaking is well worth trying.

Want to explore printmaking techniques hands-on? I run beginner-friendly linocut workshops across Essex - see upcoming dates.

Natasha Davis Art

Linocut prints and workshops, Essex, UK.

contact natasha:

hello@natashadavisart.co.uk

+44 7379 985 479

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