Cooking Up a Photo

I have finally managed to do my exposure test piece. I had real issues with my amber bottles. The opening was very small and therefore I struggled to mixup my chemicals and later could not get them out of the bottles! A very messy evening indeed. I have decided to order amber jars instead and for the time being I am using a couple of old medicine bottles I found kicking about.
Regarding my ultimate exposure then. I have tested a sheet of Fabriano Artistico, 100% Cotton, Grana Satina (300g/m2) under 4x 18W backlight blue bulbs at about 30 cm. My test piece displayed 7 min, which is a fantastic result. None of this 30-90 min varied exposure nonsense, I will be actually able to create a new piece every 7 minutes (should I wish to). Life is too short to be waisting time on natural resources!

I have to admit, I was very disappointed with the quality of my coating, it was very patchy and rough, not to mention, the shade of my blue was very light. Although, I did speed up the drying process with a hairdryer and I know this may create some random effects.  For my first image test pieces tomorrow I prepared 3x A6 and 1x A3 sheet, I actually coated them with a double coat (2/3 min between the coats) and I am letting them dry overnight. They were coated with a 5 inch Hake Brush, firstly immersed in water. I will post the results tomorrow…