The Joys of Printmaking

Yesterday, I was sporting this new fashionable look, because I was playing here:

To work with nitric acid, you have to be gloved, goggled and have the ventilation going. This is dangerous stuff! But it allows you to paint the acid on and get a very cool watercolor sort of effect.

Then, today I got to again wear this very becoming face mask (Anne thinks I need to use these as my profile pictures...) because I was playing with rosin aquatint again.

I had made a stencil in the hard ground with a sugar lift. Basically, I painted with a sugar solution onto the plate, then let it dry, then brush it with liquid hard ground, let it dry again and then soak it in warm water until the hard ground comes up where I had painted with the sugar mix. For this process, neither mask nor gloves are required - what a relief!

I had added the sugar lift to a plate I had already etched with a lace pattern (if you click on the photo below, you can really see it). Then you add the rosin, melt it onto the plate and put it in the acid. Only the areas exposed by the sugar lift will etch. It's really cool, actually!

I think I'll leave it this way for my professor to take a look at and see what else I can do. I'm just now starting to understand that you work into these plates again and again until you have a print that you like. At first I thought you had to have a finished piece with the first process you tried.

I also played with the dandelion some more. I added a soap ground in the background and then deepened the lines of the dandelion with some dry point etching. I want to find out if I can burnish the area behind the seed head a little to lighten it some more.

This one turned out nicely - my ginkgo leaf with an aquatint background. All of these are just proofs on newsprint, so the quality isn't great, but good enough for blog show and tell!

I spent about 10 hours in the print studio during the last few days and I can tell a definite improvement. Some things are becoming more rote and all of it is taking much less time and mental energy, which totally increases the fun factor.

And - this is a nice little side effect - it's quite the upper body workout every time I print - especially when I print multiple plates.... It's the only art I've ever done where you barely sit down for a few minutes. Unless you are sitting and drawing on your plate, you are on your feet the entire time.

Are you having a good Sunday? It sure is blustery and rainy here, but we are enjoying it!