Even the Grass Is Blooming

Here's a photo I took out in front of one of the other studios. It's some kind of grass that's blooming. I think it's very pretty. I've been looking at all the plants around me, getting inspiration for my etchings. I find myself drawing plants in all shapes and sizes. They're not the least bit realistic, but they look like plants to me. I think other people see them that way as well. With all the plants in Balboa Park and just in Spanish Village itself, I'm bound to be influenced.

I think I've discovered what the problem with my etching is. One of the things I haven't done that I learned to do in class was to clean any grease off the plates before putting the asphaltum on them. I've been skipping that step, partly because I didn't have the French chalk needed to clean them with. However, I do now have some and I'm going to try cleaning them.

I discovered this fact today when I took a small copper plate and added more asphaltum to it, thinking that would prevent the false biting. But there was a great deal anyway. That's what made me think that I need to clean the plates better. So that's what I'll try next.

I took some small pieces of brass and the small piece of copper and put them in the ferric chloride together. In order to keep them from touching the bottom of the dish, I suspended them with masking tape. The copper had a lot of false biting. The brass had almost none. The lines on the brass weren't as deep. And some of the copper bonded to the brass, a fact that I thought was interesting as well.

I definitely want to experiment more with the brass. It occurs to me that this time I bit the pieces for two hours today. That might be part of the reason why the copper lines were deep. I have a big piece of brass that I can etch tomorrow, to see how it does. And I'll try leaving it in for at least two hours or more, to see how deep the lines become.

Tomorrow is Fourth Thursday, so I'll be there late. Since I'm having company on Friday, I'll spend most of my time cleaning up and organizing my studio. I really need to do that. I've been putting it off, but I feel slightly embarrassed when people go in my studio and see it so messy. I have a pretty good idea of where I want everything to go, so I can take care of it.