Etching

So I'd asked for the next available week off work (I usually work Fridays and Saturdays), so I could spend two whole days drawing and maybe catch up a bit. My boss said this week would be OK. It just didn't work out though...a whole lot of Friday 13th style problems plus the torrential rain meant that I just went to BIP and did this etching , and then went home exhausted after no sleep the previous night. Better luck tomorrow I hope.

Anyway it's hard and soft ground on steel with some aquatint. Next week I'm having an induction to etching at uni which will be great (and save me a fortune too) - they use ferric chloride though which I don't have any experience of - BIP uses nitric acid.

Under a Burnished Moon

I had two failures at printing today - I ruined a plate I've been working on for ages, and also I had taken a piece of zinc home to try drypoint on (for those who don't know, drypoint is where you scratch directly onto the metal instead of through a ground followed by biting the lines with acid). The drypoint really hurt my hands (I have trouble with my joints anyway) and then when I came to print it today, the pressure was too light and it didn't come out very well. You don't get many prints off a drypoint anyway because the burr wears away (and it's the burr that gives a lovely soft line). So I gave up on it. The print above was almost a failure too - originally I'd done the moon using chine colle, but the blue ink made it a horrible muddy colour - I was about to go home but then decided to try burnishing it instead, and I think it worked out OK.

Luckily I have much more patience with creative things than I used to when I was little. In fact I have loads more patience with creative things than with absolutely any other aspect of life. Put a slow-moving queue in front of me and I am foaming at the mouth within seconds!

Prints and stress

I've somehow gone down with shingles around my right eye, two days before The Interview. I feel really low, not to mention thoroughly pissed off. Thank goodness for my printing class, where I did these...



The tree is etching and aquatint on zinc, with chine colle. The red riding hood at the bottom is just a proof - next week I am going to make a colour plate for the girl's coat so that it prints red. So far on this plate, it is etching and aquatint. On steel. It's still damp, so sorry about the wibblywobbliness of the paper.


I have recklessly signed up for another 6 weeks of printing. I'd leave too much unfinished business if I just stopped now. I can't afford it, but I am telling myself it's an investment....