Nature Sunprints

Sun prints have always been a huge hit whenever I have done them with children.

The sheer joy kids find in the discovery, the experimentation, and the outcome never ceases to amaze me with this medium.

I knew it would be a perfect project to do in the "Drawing from Nature" camp at Seymour Art Gallery.

The only problem is that in the northwest, sun can be a bit of a crap shoot and although I have done this project years ago in the middle of winter with very little sun, it takes FOREVER for the prints to finish. You really do want the sun to be shining strong so the kids do not get too impatient waiting for the prints to be ready.

Although not great for our water situation, lucky for us this summer has been unusually sunny and dry. So I knew we were in for a perfect day to do sun prints.

I put all the items the kids had collected on Monday's hike into one communal pile.

Knowing the kids would want to do several prints once they started, I cut the sun paper into fourths in order to keep the project cost effective and allow the kids the opportunity to have fun with the medium until their hearts content.

And fun they had!

The process is quite simple.

First, I had the kids create a small composition using the items collected. When they were happy, I gave them a piece of sun paper or in our case, sun fabric.

At this point, I stress how important it is to get their pieces quickly onto the paper as it is quite sensitive to light. Then they carefully took it out to the deck and placed it into the bright sunshine.

Then they waited for about five minutes for the paper to change colors.

Some kids wanted to move things once it was out in the sun, but quickly learned that does not work. Once it is down, it can't be moved. A good lesson in learning to live with decisions and being quite thoughtful in the decisions one makes since there isn't a "do over".

Once the paper turned colors, they took off the items and placed the paper (fabric) into a shallow bowl of water.

Oh the excitement as the paper changed and they saw the final results.

Needless to say, there was a frenzy of activity as they created multiple prints. It was fun to watch them share results among each other and ultimately be inspired by each other throughout the process.

We had butterflies made from shells.

 

And some kids used sticks and shells to create the initials of their names.

Of course everyone tried just some arrangements of different natural items just to see what would happen. How great are these sea pods?!! 

I wasn't the only one who thought they were great either. Several kids couldn't wait to add them to their compositions after seeing the above results.

And how beautiful are these simple prints of a fern leaf?

 

Or these sea pods that look like part of an intergalactic composition?

There was a wide variety of compositions using all the natural elements on hand.

Even those prints that might of been "mistakes" turned out lovely. The feather was not exposed long enough and the shells are the learning example of not moving items once the sun process has begun, although it might be a good example of why you should move items in the middle of the printing process too since the result is quite interesting.

I think it is safe to say that the kids really enjoyed this project. One might even say they loved it. 

I'm sure come next summer on a lovely, sunny day, I'll be introducing this project again. Who could resist a project that brings so much joy to the kids participating? Certainly not me.

Sun Print Dye!!!

Last summer, I discovered Sun Print dye for fabric at the art store.

It works just like Sun Paper.

And with the same reasoning used for why one needs a 16th pair of black high heel shoes, I bought the dye in every color.

I came home and immediately gave it a try, painting an original artwork with a piece of clear acetate and India Ink, then placing it over the fabric painted with dye outside in the sun

It came out gorgeous and so I tucked the new project idea neatly away for the perfect class at a later date.

The perfect class seemed to be the Printmaking Workshop I ran at the studio last week.

I asked each parent to send their child with a white t-shirt so they could make a sun print of their own artwork to wear.

But since the students ranged in age from 5 to 11, I thought why not make it a bit easier for them and use Sharpie pens instead of the India Ink?

It'll be great!

Until it wasn't great.

This is what printed, TADA!!

terribly unsuccessful sun dye print on fabric

Thank goodness I had the kids do a test run on some scrap fabric first! I would have died if I ruined the t-shirts their parents had gone to all the trouble to buy for the class.

For all my, "embrace the mistakes", I preach to the kids, I panicked.

(although I'm quite intrigued with the way the masking tape printed on the left side of the above work and will be pursuing experimenting with creating an artwork with masking tape on acetate to use over the dye, so I guess I am embracing the mistake after all )

What went wrong?

Why didn't it work?

I knew I didn't want the kids to wait around while I figured it out and so I pulled out the gelatin plates I had made to start a monoprint project. I would figure out the sun dye fail once the kids had gone home for the day.

The prints are made with acrylic paint mixed with a bit of retarder, they turned out beautiful and most importantly, without a glitch!

Thank goodness!

6 year old

7 year old

11 year old

5 year old

7 year old

So once the artist had gone home for the night, I sat down and faced the fact that changing from India Ink to Sharpie pen was not a good idea.

I carefully went over every Sharpie line the artists created with India Ink, making sure I did not change the integrity of their work. It seemed unfair to have the kids have to redo everything after they had already worked so hard because of my blunder.

Then I did another test run on scrap fabric.

I refused to use their t-shirts until I was positive the project was going to work.

Lo and behold, mystery solved.

So if you want to do original artworks on acetate to print on either Sun paper or Sun dye, DO NOT use Sharpie pen. You MUST use India Ink. 

So I went ahead and put the "test" fabric work on Bristol using matte medium so the girls could take it home. It only seemed right after how patient they had been when things weren't working for them to have their artwork to not only wear but also display.

6 year old (this is a fish caught in a droplet of water, sitting on a leaf)

7 year old

8 year old

11 year old

5 year old

And no, that is not an issue with my photography skills, the wolf is yellow. You see I wasn't quite done messing around with blunders and did the first scrap"test"on a heavy linen. It did not register as well as cotton and so I needed to redo it one more time and accidentally grabbed the yellow dye instead of the brown.

Honestly by this point, I didn't need a glass of wine but the whole bottle! Best for my health to just leave it at yellow and move on.

7 year old

And then the next morning, we FINALLY created their t-shirts and they couldn't wait to put them on after they had been washed and almost dried.  They could of used another 10 minutes in the dryer, but camp day closing waits for no one...even slow dryers.

I certainly hope the artist enjoy them. Once I got the project back on track, they all turned out great.