The Undertaker's Nuptials

Started putting some words down for my next series of prints. Having spent so long illustrating other people’s words, it was really satisfying to illustrate my own in creating the Red Scar series. That happened by accident really; the story (never finished) was written to amuse a friend and I hadn’t intended to use it as a starting point for a series of etchings… but that’s how it turned out. The image of the three characters in the coach was so vivid in my mind, I had to make a drawing of it.

I don’t like my drawings. As a rule, they’re fairly dead on the page until I turn them into a print. I suppose it’s the combination of textures and quality of line and tone which is impossible to create in any other medium other than printmaking.

This time, I’m going one step further; writing the story – The Undertaker’s Nuptials - specifically to generate images. We’ll see how it goes.

Spoils...

Not finished yet but here are the fruits of my labours at the workshop on Friday. The first four states of the villain from The Red Scar series of etchings. Not sure quite where I’m going with this one.

I’ve all but abandoned the cockle commission for the moment, partly due to a broken fine spitsticker (less than two months old and NO, suppliers, I had not been misusing it) and partly to my defection back to etching. The cockle is very different from my usual style of work; I tend to go for figurative images and dark narratives. It will get done though.

Mmm, that was indeed a good Friday.
Solitude at RHP; just me, my etching and a few sea gulls. And a spot of rain of course – wouldn’t be an Easter bank holiday without it – but it’s warm and dry in there. And above all silent. It seems odd to me that one can get to a stage in one’s life where one craves silence… but there it is.

Normally I do a lot of preparation at home for a day at the workshop, but life is so crazy at the moment that I just hadn’t had time. I wanted to finish a plate I last worked on in October (the fourth image in The Red Scar series), but when I looked at the last proof I pulled, I just had no idea where to go. Depressing. In wood engraving mode only perhaps…

ANYWAY. Once I got to the workshop and started working on the plate, everything fell into place, tcp. The plate’s not finished and I didn’t achieve an awful lot print-wise, but I had time, space and quiet for a good old think.

I had originally envisaged Project Atelier as a space to work on wood engravings; I’d be able to have all my tools and equipment in there (freeing up space indoors – I might actually be able to see some carpet here and there) and I’d could then leave everything set up. Away with spending hours getting everything out and putting it all away again afterwards – bliss! This is all good, but yesterday reminded me where my heart really lies – etching. That’s my thing. As much as I love wood engraving, it just doesn’t suit my work and processes like etching does. So, Project Atelier is gearing up a notch…

What a good day I had yesterday.
After five long months intaglioless, I finally got a chance to get thoroughly inky again. There’s nothing so satisfying as being able to look at one’s blackened fingernails and ink-stained skin, knowing that there’s a batch of freshly pulled prints – good ones at that – flattened under boards to dry.

I really didn’t expect to pull so many good ones yesterday. Five months is a long time to be away from one’s work. Prior to that, I was printing and etching every other week and working on the plates in between. Working that intensively, you become familiar with all the little nuances of the plates; you know exactly how much ink to use, which areas need a little more or a little less; how to wipe, where to wipe vigorously, where to wipe gently. As you pull each proof, you study it and notice all its subtleties, making decisions almost subconsciously as you go along. It sounds poncey I know, and I like to think I’m not pretentious but I think it’s true to say that you work with the plate rather than on it. That’s what’s so wonderful about etching – you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get. You have an idea how it’ll look when you pull that first proof, but there’s always an element of surprise. The plate, the ground and the etching solution all conspire to give you something you didn’t quite expect. It may not always be a good surprise of course, but that keeps you from complacency.

Yesterday I printed the second and third images in my Red Scar series. I’ve used details of these in the blog header and as my profile picture. They’re soft and hard ground on zinc, with some rather haphazard use of straw hat varnish, etched in copper sulphate solution. The plate area is approximately 15 x 10 cm. Like most of my work, they are illustrative – based on a story about a highwayman. A story destined never to be finished…