New Etching Lessons

Here you can begin to see the "lanterns" that form in the tree after the flowers drop off. It's that dark orange spot in the middle about two thirds of the way up. And when I arrived this afternoon after the printmaking class, I see there are half a dozen lanterns on my outside worktable. However, they're small ones, not yet full developed. I'm not sure why they fall off. Maybe there isn't room for all of them and the tree automatically sheds some. I really should try to do some research and find out a little bit about the trees.

Today was my day off, but I was here this morning, and I've returned after my printmaking class to bring my work back here. I have a portfolio that I keep my new etchings in and a box for some of the other items, like plates and newsprint to wrap them in to protect them in transport. Everything fits in a large bag that I dug out today. I had been carrying just the box and sometimes I used a grocery bag to carry things in. But this bag is one I've used in the past. One of the reasons I decided on the bag was because I spent time this morning searching in my studio for my etching needle, and I couldn't find it. So now that I'm using the bag, I'll just make sure I keep at least one in the bag. I'll always know where it is.

Jon gave me a Kodak digital camera that runs with two AA batteries. So I tried it this morning. I wasn't very happy with the photos I took. One thing that's kind of funny is that the view finder is not accurate, so it isn't WYSIWYG. You don't get what you see. I can adjust for that, I'm sure. Another thing that's kind of funny is that it comes with software for viewing and printing the photos. The thing is that the photos come out a distorted shape. And they're not very detailed. However, I see there's a way to turn the macro on and off. I have no idea how, but the Kodak website has an online manual that I can read and refer to. That's very handy.

I spent the afternoon working on several etching plates. One was a brass plate that I etched last night. The aquatint didn't come out as well as I would have liked, and not as well as the copper ones. So I used a roulette wheel that we have in the classroom. No, it's not the same as gaming table. It's a tiny little cylinder that turns when you move it across the plate. It has tiny little protrusions that make pricks in the plate that ideally will hold ink. It works well, but probably not as well as I would hope. It seems to take a long time. But is that just my California, life-in-the-fast-lane mentality? I don't know. I've been attempting to fix the problems on my plates, but sometimes I wonder if it would just be easier to do them over again. The problems are caused by some of my lack of knowledge when I first undertook to etch plates on my own. Now that I know better, I'm tempted to abandon them. However, correcting them is a good learning experience.

One thing I did learn was that aquatint isn't as successful on the brass as it is on copper. Or at least, I should say my first attempt to apply aquatint to brass didn't turn out very well. There were areas where the aquatint didn't take. Now it might be that when I applied the rosin in the first place, it didn't stick evenly. I admit I didn't check that. Next time I will. Or it might be that I didn't leave it in the etching solution long enough. I'm not sure that was the case though.

It's interesting to try etching on the different metals. When the printmaking class first began, I searched through my drawer at school and found some small plates I had created several years ago that were almost twins of some of the copper plates I've created in the last several months. But the lines on the zinc plates are not nearly as fine as those on the copper. And the lines on a brass plate are even finer and crisper than copper. There's so much to learn and do.

Late in the day, the professor asked me about whether I had been pressing my prints. I said I never had done that; I wasn't sure how. So he explained that after each print air dries for about 10 minutes, I should place it between two sheets of newsprint and put a board on top of it. There's one in the corner of the classroom on the type rack that is just for that purpose. So that will be the next part of the process that I haven't done in the past that I will now incorporate. The process is so involved.