Change of plan

That wasn't the weekend I expected. Had planned to spend Saturday at the art gallery on a life drawing workshop but owing to Act of Aged P, I spent a large part of Saturday cleaning and wading through a mountain of washing. She is fine now but didn't feel I could leave her on Saturday.

Anyway, silver linings, blah, blah, blah, I did manage some time on the current PB. Line etched the skeleton and spit bit the surround with a coarse aquatint. It's come out really well too. I need to get this image finished by the end of January so it was good to have the time on it I guess, though I was really looking forward to the life drawing. Haven't done any for a month so going into withdrawal somewhat. New class starts up Tuesday evening - different place, different teacher though. Will see how that goes.

 

Requires Improvement

Pirate Baby marches on; or rather dances on in this print. Gradually working in tone with spit bite. It's a bit too light at the moment but it's heading in the right direction. I can keep reworking and reworking it. 

I need to decide what to do with the windows next. Got a couple of ideas but need to make some sketches first. More soon hopefully.

All about technique

Despite the rubbishness of work, I have managed to find some time for printmaking; here's what I've been working on over the last six weeks. It's all about technique with this image so I've been throwing just about every etching technique I can think of at it including spit bite and drawing into a soft ground through tissue paper. Thirteen states so far and still some way to go - I'd like to have it finished by September. Already brewing ideas for the next couple of images...

Spit bite with copper sulphate

Still feeling inspired by the first meeting of our new artists’ group last week, I managed to spend a sizeable chunk of time in the studio over the weekend - and made good progress with the Captain. I tried some spit bite which wasn’t so successful. Using the copper sulphate solution straight from the bath etched a little, as you can see from the above scan; I kept adding more of the etch every five minutes or so, which produced the sort of effect I wanted. However, the bite was so shallow and delicate that I managed to remove it completely when I degreased the plate for the next aquatint. Back to the drawing board.

On googling ‘spit bite with copper sulphate’, I found this rather interesting site which recommends mixing a solution of 800g copper sulphate crystals to 1 litre of water; a much stronger solution than in the bath (which is also partially spent). The images of test strips on the site look promising so my goal for this week is to try it out.