Here's a photo I took several days ago, looking across the patio toward the San Diego Zoo. You can see the lantern pods coming out on that middle tree as well. The tree on the right in the foreground is one of the jacaranda trees. You can see a few of the seed pods hanging from its branches as well. They are a two-part pod that turns woody and eventually bursts open. The lanterns on the other tree are a three part pod that bursts as well but is actually the consistency of paper rather than wood. I remember several years ago seeing a branch of the lanterns on the counter in one of the studios. They could be preserved like dried flowers and used in arrangements. Technically, though, since we are in the Park, we're not supposed to pick anything off the trees.
Yesterday someone suggested that I make jewelry for children. Other people have made that suggestion as well. I spent some time this afternoon looking up children's jewelry on the internet. The bracelets seem to run anywhere from 5 1/2 inches to 6 1/2 inches long and necklaces seem to run from 12 to 16 inches, the most common being 15 inches. I think it might be worth a try. I have lots of little beads and some of my work is very small and delicate, the proper proportion for children's jewelry. The person who suggested it yesterday says he has trouble finding jewelry for his daughter, that there seems to be very little available and it's of limited design.
Today I'm concentrating on etching in preparation for my class tomorrow. I hve one plate that I need to "repair." I used a ball of masking tape to hold the plate up off the floor of the etching dish and some of the lines did not etch deeply enough to hold ink. I have just attempted to re-etch them and hopefully it will work. I'll see tomorrow when I take the plate to school and try to print it. Now I have another plate in the etching solution to etch some of the area that I have covered with rosin. If it works as I foresee, the areas will be aquatinted and will hold ink, creating areas of solid tone. On this particular plate, I want to create several shades of tone, so I'll etch it, take it out, print it, and then probably add rosin again and etch it again to create a darker tone. I could cover some of the exposed area and put it back in the solution before printing, so that I could get it done today, but I'd rather take the time to make sure I like the results.
One of the plates that I etched which will be part of my current plant series is a brass plate. It seems to me, at first blush, that the brass doesn't hold the aquatint as well as the copper. But I'd like to reserve final judgement until I've tried it more times. However, for now I think I will most likely stick with copper plates and not create anymore brass ones. The one exception might be that if I'm doing some three dimensional pieces, it would be very nice to combine and/or layer the brass and copper together into one piece. But for now that's probably a little further down the road.
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