Slow Cloudy Saturday

Here's a view of the main patio at Spanish Village showing the jacaranda in bloom and the bougainvillea in the background. I can see the photo looks a little crooked. I admit I get excited and I just snap the shot. Sometimes I'm not at all careful about keeping the camera straight. However, Spanish Village was built in such a haphazard fashion that it's very difficult to use the ordinary rules of perspective to draw the buildings. So if everything is leaning or strange, it might be the camera operator, but it might be the buildings themselves.

Anyway, if you walk down beyond that second awning and turn right, you'll come to the little patio where my studio is located. I sit at my outside table and look at the bougainvillea, the fushia flowers on the second story roof in the back. I sat out there today, looking out at the gloom. The weatherman predicted hot weather for this weekend, and we still might have hot weather tomorrow. But it certainly didn't materialize today. Well, when I say hot, I mean in the high 70's. Don't laugh. That's hot for us. A typical summer day is usually no more than 74 or 75 at the highest, except maybe in August. Today, however, I think it was only up to 74 degrees and it was overcast. The humidity was relatively high and there seemed to be a tropical storm blowing up from the Gulf of California. That sometimes happens, usually in August.

Yesterday, I got some of the tools I will need to create etching plates. I bought a piece of copper that measured 18 by 24 inches. I use to pay $44 for it. Now it costs $65. Then I bought an electric grill or skillet to heat the plates on. When they're warm enough, the asphaltum which provides the resist will melt and I can spread it on the plates with a roller. That's the first step in the etching process. While I was out, I got two spatulas to lift the hot copper plates off the grill and a glass cooking dish in which to etch the copper.

This morning, I figured out how many pieces I was going to cut the copper plate into, based on the standard sizes of the mats I use. I wound up with two plates that are 9 inches square, six that are 4 inches square, two that are 7 by 9 inches, and two that are 4 by 8 inches. Now I just need to plan the artwork to go on them. I'd like to do a series of plants, kind of like sea plants or succulents, strange plants that are just barely identifiable as such. I like to see how far I can push the envelop and still create something recognizeable. When I showed my sketches to one of the artists, he saw the plant likeness.

So after I marked where the cuts would go, I went back to the Enamel Guild and asked to use their jump shear again. I had used it previously, but I decided the plates I cut were the wrong sizes for the standard mats, and they seemed a little thin as well. One of the members helped me by catching the cut pieces so they wouldn't fall on the floor. If they do, their corners can bend, and it's hard to flatten them out again.

I took the plates back to my studio, but I haven't put any asphaltum on them yet. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow. I find myself hesitating frequently when I do something new. I don't like that about myself, preferring to think that I'm courageous and just jump into any new situation, but the reality is that's not the case. I will spend some time thinking about heating my plates, and then I'll do it tomorrow morning. Certainly I heated lots and lots of plates when I took printmaking classes in college, but using this new grill may turn out to be a different experience. Something unexpected might occur. Oh, that makes me laugh. Really, it's silly to be so silly.