There are now 12 plates filed and sanded. I only took 93 pictures of the plate arrangements this time. I am so grateful for the lack of worry about how many pictures I can afford to take. I love my point and shoot digital camera. Even so , I am dreaming of a 12 X zoom someday.
I am mentally treating my weekly blog like a school assignment, for my "One With Copper" project. This stage of the project is very tedious sanding and filing the copper plates. I treat the photo session like a reward. What the etched designs on both sides of the copper will be is still at the pondering stage as I sand the plates. I keep thinking of patterns, rather then actual images. Another idea is to line etch the photos onto the plates. I love the thinking stage of a new project.
Mean While in the Studio:
This is a new woodcut I am starting.
9.5 x 7.5 inches
I have not settled on a name for it yet. One idea is "Bird in the Moon" but I do not think I will stick with that.
This is a copper plate experiment with future floor polish. The plate started of with a hard-ground coat of future floor polish. I drew on the plate with permanent maker and scratched and etched it. Then I took Q tips and alcohol to areas in the sky and dissolved the hard-ground (future floor polish), let it dry and then painted Edinburgh etch on the plate to etch the dissolved area a bit. I left a little future floor polish in a container uncovered overnight. It was like thick Elmer's glue in the morning. So I painted it into the umbrella area to give it some texture. The plate you see here is being reworked again, because the resulting proof is really ugly!!!!!!!!!!!!! close your eyes, here it comes.
The plate above is in the etch again. I sanded the sky areas a bit to open the plate up some more to the etch. I do not want to aquatint because I would like a softer washed out look. I plan to build up the umbrella more with the future dehydrated stuff. When things are this bad it is fun to just loosen up and see what happens. It does have a title: "Washed up on the Beach".
Some old work:
The artwork on the wall are two silkscreens from 1992 in a show at the Confederation Centre. The show is coming down next week so I asked if I could go in and take a picture. The top image is called "Madame and Sir Thomas" referring to the two now grown up young adults in the picture above. The bottom image is called "Catch Mom, Catch". I wasn't very good at playing catch.
That is it for this week .. Happy Printing Everyone
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