19th October

I interpreted the brief of creating and exploring the medium of cyanotype with developing previous work that I’ve done, particularly the idea of tunnels/tunnel maps and connections under the City of Glasgow. I think that this worked well because I had cohesive work to build off of and develop further, which gave my work structure. When creating my cyanotypes, I took inspiration from artists like Anna Atkins, Anna Hepler and Walead Beshty because of the organic shapes created in their work, and their technique. I also looked at natural landscape and anatomy as a major part of my inspiration. The fluid organic shapes in nature and body are something that I wanted to incorporate in my work and combine with the urban tunnel aspect that I’m already looking at. I thought it would be interesting to show the connection between the urban landscape and nature. I think this work was some of my most successful from this course so far. The way that I incorporated previous ideas into my work helped me create a more cohesive project and develop it, also made it easier to create more work after. The more natural shapes created in my cyanotypes allowed for me to build on the idea of the interconnected themes of urban architecture/infrastructure and nature. It was important as it lets me practice using a material I'm familiar with, whilst also letting me experiment and explore the possibilities within the medium. If I was to develop this technique further I would explore the idea of making the prints darker with coffee. I do like the blue but I think that the type of work that I'm creating, it would fit the tone better. I would want to have it heavily contrasted. I would also explore having more varied types of exposures and exposure lengths. By doing this, the tone in the prints would hold more atmosphere and fit the overall feel that I wanted my project to have. I would also like to try out different water and humidity experiments on the prints. This would include experimenting with the texture of water and the light refractions from it. It would be interesting to incorporate more of my work into the prints, such as my hand-drawn maps or my shadow sculptured work.