EZIO at the COLISSEUM....

EZIO at the COLISSEUM (one S or two??)

Still not particularly happy with the final result and there was a LOT of faffing around on this.  First attempt at the aquatint, I got the spray too fine and the coverage too good so it didn't etch at all - file away under "possible hard ground?".  The second attempt was pretty good - short, sharp bursts from about 12" away worked well.  I didn't really want it that black, all the line work in the figure got lost so I dry pointed it in afterward. 20sec, 40sec, 1min, 2min in E.E. so darkest tone was only 4 mins in total. Fast stuff.  Hard to tell if it's stripped all the way to the fibreglass though....

So what have I learned?

1. Etch the line longer - 4 mins?
2. short sharp bursts from airbrust with undiluted acrylic ink
3. Commercially produced liquid hard ground goes on too thick, cracks and chips and is generally quite shitty. AVOID.  Having said that, it is what I used here.
4. Dry point adds interesting variation to the line depths
5. 4 mins in Edinburgh etch is enough for a good black. 

Back to the drawing board. Once I can drag myself away from Assassins Creed that is....

Thinking I might try etching on aluminium cans...gonna get me some Copper Sulphate for that little experiment.

So nearly there..

This turned out a little too dark in the end.  I had to airbrush the aquatint on twice since for some reason, the 2nd acrylic masking layer just flaked off.  I stupidly dunked it in the Etching solution anyway, thereby bringing the down the tone of the whole lot (except for the already whited out areas).  Not sure why the resist didn't stick - a reaction with the Edinburgh Etch perhaps (even though this had been well rinsed off).  The 2nd time I applied the spray aquatint after stripping it of any other resist, I tried to get it a bit 'blobbier' for a more open effect, then used Sharpie marker as the resist.  Then etched for another minute and a half.

Mostly, I'm quite pleased with this.  The very fine aquatint spray does give the effect of a watercolour wash.  I actually think I prefer the more spotty and random effect of a heavier spray like in the toner experiment previously.  Being an airbrush newbie, it's a bit tricky to judge the flow.  I'll get there.

For reference, this is Caligo Sepia ink on Somerset paper.  I will be avoiding Hahnemuhle paper since it seems to make the ink run and sticks to the plate.  Not a bad paper I'm sure, just not suitable with water based inks.

I have begun noticing as well that the lines that make up the fibreglass backing of the PCB are showing through, only very faintly but could be enough to make me look for sheet copper instead.

A little aquatint experiment...

Well, I'm rather pleased with how this turned out.

My aim here was to use aquatint tones to produce a detailed image without any line.  Not that I have anything against line.  I've always struggled with tonal drawing/painting, being much more of a scratchy line kind of person, so this was in interesting challenge.  

The process I used was a combination of Acrylic aquatint and toner transfer.  A watered down acrylic medium and acrylic ink solution was sprayed on using a £10 airbrush. 

I used photoshop to make masks for the three levels of etch by making a mock version of how I wanted the image to look.  Each tone painted on a seperate layer, then converted to black and inverted - I need the white areas masked on the copper which means they need to be printed black. 

After a few epic fails with various shiny papers, I had a forehead slapping moment when I discovered that the best result came from ordinary photocopy paper.  My laser printer, a cheapy Brother HL-2035 (with third party toner cartridge) does not seem to be overly generous with the toner so I ran it through twice.  Took me and my middle aged brain a while to work out which way to feed the paper in for the second going over and no matter how many times I tried, it was always out by a mm or so (which means this would not work for very fine detail).

The first mask (the white areas) was stuck to the (already sprayed with acrylic) PCB by running through a laminator a few times, till it gets too hot to handle really.  The boards are pretty thick and the laminator grumbles a bit but so far so good.  Then the whole thing is dunked in water till the paper comes away, leaving the toner mask stuck to the board.  That is the theory.  In reality, the toner never seems to stick too well at the edges, thinking this may be due to my greasy fingers handling the edges?  Anyway, I tried to mask them in with my trusty Sharpie pen but as can just about be seen at the top and bottom edges, this does not produce as good a mask as the toner.  The board is then floated upside down, stuck to its foam lilo bed for 1 minute for the lightest tone.

Rinse and repeat.  I did another 1 minute for the next tone (so 2 minutes in total, come on, keep up), then another 6 minutes for the darkest tone (a total of 8 minutes).  So that's 3 seperate masks, 3 times in the Edinburgh Etch solution.

Now, 3 layers of toner are an absolute pig to get off.  Next time, I will make each mask with the previous subtracted from it rather than just pile it up, so the total layer is only 1 thickness of toner and not 3.  Don't know why I didn't think of that first.  Anyway, much scrubbing with nail varnish remover (for the acetone) later and a very satisfactorily etched board appears.

Again, printed with Sepia Caligo ink onto BFK Rives paper.  A successful day.

Edinburgh Etch...

I finally plucked up the nerve to try some messy, metal plate etchings and discovered....

it really isn't so messy at all!

Here's a linky to the etch info http://www.lawrence.co.uk/fact_sheets/pdfs/Edinburgh%20Etch.pdf

The Ferric Chloride comes in stinky yellow pellets, which dissolve in water and conveniently enough are sold in the same place as the copper PCBs which I used for my plates.

Citric acid is pretty easy to come by, think ebay, and I already had some lurking from some nefarious culinary project.

I mixed this all into a lidded plastic tub, as per the recipe above, and that is all there is to that. 

There's loads of talk and videos regarding vertical aerated etching tanks, which I'm sure are all super but I am impatient and lazy so stuck the back of my plate to a bit of foam with brown packaging tape and made a couple of tape 'handles' on the foam so it would float on the top of the etching fluid and I could easily lift it out.  The theory being that the sludge that occurs in the etched areas will drop to the bottom rather than bung up the fine lines.  Seems to work anyway.

The intial problem I had was finding a satisfactory ground for the plate.  I located a really ancient bottle of 'Klear' floor polish as per most acrylic etching recommendations and had no joy at all with the stuff.  Maybe because it was so ancient (or maybe I was putting it on too thick?) but I found it curled up and looked like birch bark as it dried.  I didn't really want to pay for some Speedball Screen filler and it's not easy to come by anyway.

I'm experimenting still with toner transfers - a distinctly hit and miss affair at the moment.

But the above piece was achieved using....a black sharpie pen.  Not the most elegant solution and would be a horrid idea on large plates but on the 100mm x 80mm I am using it's fine.  I did one layer as best as I could, let it dry overnight then lay on another layer.  It was fairly obvious which areas were not coloured in solidly enough and were going to look a bit crap when it etched but I left them there just to prove to myself. Drew in the design with my trusty knackered compass and floated on the etch gunk for 8 mins.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with this result (design very roughly copied by the way from a book on Piranesi etchings).  I'm gonna try to locate one of the big fat sharpie markers and see how they compare.

So, next things to try are 1. Sharpie magnum marker pen resist and 2. acrylic aquatint since I have aquired an air brush yeehah!

Here we go again..

I'm finally getting round to going back to the drawing board with my printmaking experiments.

Hopefully, if I put things up here someone may stumble across and be able to offer some help and assistance or vice versa.

So much of what I've been attempting has come from the www.nontoxicprint.com website that it seems only right and just to mention it right here.

To get back into the swing of things, I started mucking about with a few drypoints.

These are made on plastic packaging of various kinds that I salvage from (usually) toy packaging. My 'etching needle' is an old metal compass that I found lurking.

The ink is Caligo safe wash etching ink which is lovely and one of the few things quite easily available in UK online art shops. I'm particularly partial to the Sepia colour, seems to just the right consistency and is a rich colour, seems stronger than the black for some reason.

I've had lots of problems with papers, but most success seems to come with BFK Rives paper.

I've only got a piddly little press but since I always end up working small anyway it suits me and means the huge sheets of paper last absolutely ages. One day, I should really try working on a large size print.

Another upcoming exhibition...another flyer...

This one for the Digby gallery in Colchester which is part of the Mercury theatre. I really want to get some new prints or encaustics done for this exhibition but doubt I will make it on time. Anyway...the flyer as designed by me...

Exhibition done at last...

So here are the pictures of my work at the show. The prints got framed and had a nice spot of wall and the encaustic pieces got a plinth in the corner. I thought it all looked really impressive and was a successful end to our time together as art students. Now what am I going to do with myself....?