Follow in the footsteps of early Victorian alternative photographic pioneers and immerse yourself in the magical process of cyanolumen where science meets art in a hands-on bespoke workshop.

Get a group of friends together and join cyanotype artist, Laurinda Bellew from Blue Lumiere Art, who will guide you. through the cyanolumen printmaking process, using various techniques, photographic paper, cyanotype solution, and sunshine. Spend the day experimenting and create your very own beautiful botanical images to take home.

Cyanolumen process combines the cyanotype process with lumen printing on vintage expired photographic paper. Real plants, leaves, or negatives are placed on the expired photographic paper and coated with a cyanotype sensitiser solution. The print is exposed using UV rays from the sun which react with the iron compounds in the cyanotype solution and the silver gelatine coating of the photographic paper to leave an image on the paper and create interesting effects, tones and texture.

Lumen prints are solar photograms, a cameraless process, first introduced in the 19th century by William Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of the photographic negative. Cyanotype is one of the oldest alternative photographic printing methods. Made popular in the 1840’s by John Herschel and Anna Atkins and was used as a cheaper cameraless alternative to photography to capture images.

‘Blueprints’, as they were traditionally known, were used for architectural plans and cataloguing botanical discoveries.

All materials, safety equipment and refreshments provided.

Would suit those who have completed a cyanotype beginners’ workshop and have some knowledge of cyanotype techniques.

BOOKING INFORMATION

Dates: by arrangement

Times: 4 hour workshops

Tickets: £75 (adults 18+ only) 15% discount for those who have completed a cyanotype beginners workshop with

Blue Lumiere Art

Group numbers: 2-5. Private tuition available on request.

Venue: Grove House, Leigh Grove, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, BA15 2RF

About your tutor:

Laurinda is a cyanotype artist working from her home studio in rural Wiltshire. Laurinda first discovered alternative photographic processes while studying for a master’s degree in history of art in 1995. She explored many art forms over the years but returned to the cyanotype process in 2013 as a way of recording and preserving the beauty of her rural surroundings in intricate detail.

Working in both traditional and wet processes, Laurinda also experiments with mixed media colour, wet in wet, to capture moments of time and place - a misty day, a summer breeze, or the first light of dawn.

Laurinda is represented by galleries in Wiltshire and North Yorkshire, and has exhibited locally in the Cotswolds and South West England.