Reflection on the past fortnight, 8th May 2017
Sketching and etching
I did a final sketch of St Paul’s
(see also this week 65 blogpost) which still wasn’t brilliant, but allowed me a
further chance to play with perspective. I don’t know why I found it so
difficult; possibly it was because I was trying to alter the perspective from
the photo I was using. Next day I transposed it to one of the little copper
plates and worked on this for a couple of days. It still wasn’t a brilliant
drawing, but the etching worked and I got some prints out of it. I used the
needle with the slanted edge (I think it’s called an echoppe) which worked well
when making curved shapes. I also used a roulette wheel to give some texture to
the blossoms and leaves and I was surprised by how deeply it bit. It took so
deeply in relation to the etched lines that I didn’t think they had bitten. I
imagine I probably dug too far in with the wheel.
One result of this
was that the blossoms were obscured. I thought about drypointing them in, but
Mike suggested regrounding, re-etching and re-biting the plate. This seemed
like a good way to learn about multiple grounding. I used liquid hard ground
again and the resulting re-work certainly gave more definition. However there
was a lot of “foul bite”, with dots here and there. I then realised I’d not
cleaned the plate before re-grounding, so presumably there were dots of grease
that resisted the ground. Possibly not ideal, but a lesson learnt. Also the
dots gave some texture, so possibly a slightly happy accident.
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| Springtime St Paul's |
I had intended to
grind this off the plate and do a completely different design, but I’d learnt
so much from this little plate that I’ve kept it, for now at least.
On Saturday and
Sunday I attended the “Etching Weekend” at the West Yorkshire Print workshop in
Mirfield. It was excellent. I worked with two images; a photo of Assisi I’d
taken on holiday a few years ago, which I knew would work up into different
areas of tone, and an image of some tulips from my mini-dérive with Michelle.
On the Saturday we
prepared and etched a hard ground plate, for which I used the Siena image. I’d
already practised a lot of this technique but I learnt a lot of hints and tips.
We also prepared a soft ground plate. It was really interesting to see the
nuances of different workshops.
On Sunday we
started with the soft ground plate, into which I pressed some plant materials
that were just growing outside the window. I then traced the photo of some tulips
into the ground. I was surprised how dark and crayony the marks bit; the soft
ground is very fragile compared to the liquid hard ground I’ve been using in
college.
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| Assisi aquatint |
The next stage was
aquatint, and I decided to aquatint both plates. Our technician, Kate, applied
the actual rosin powder but I would like to learn how to do this. I’d worked out
the tones I wanted for the Assisi print and it was a bit tedious applying the
stop out varnish to achieve this, not really knowing what the outcome would be.
I was very pleased with the result considering it is a first effort. It printed
rather too dark but Kate showed us how to adjust the transparency of the ink to
allow lighter-toned printing.
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| Sepia tint tulips |
The plant material
images and the heavy drawing marks of the tulips don’t necessarily belong on
the same plate, but they don’t look too bad together and this serves as a
really good test/ideas plate for future soft ground use. Kate helped me to
print it in colour. I would have liked to have picked her brains further on
that point, but time didn’t permit. All in all an excellent weekend.
I mentioned in
this week 63 blogpost that I’d submitted a conference abstract and heard
nothing. It transpires that an email must have got lost somewhere in the ether
as it had been accepted! This caused a panic as the conference had been
extended to two days and my panel clashed with the walking event with Zoë and
Lynne. Fortunately the organisers were mighty accommodating and have moved my
panel to the morning so I can do both events. So that’s a paper to write added
into the plan then!
Otherwise…
I was away over the
weekend, which was great, so other than that I’m desperately trying to catch up
with my creative journal. It’s good reflecting back with the benefit of
hindsight but I really wish it was a bit more up-to-date!
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