Aquatint Progress

Using hard ground to block out areas that I don't want to aquatint:



After aquatinting and removing the hard ground:



Color separation of the two plates:



(Burnt Umber, Midnight Blue)

These aren't the colors I'm going to end up using, but it's the general palette (one warm, brownish plate, one cool grey-blue plate). I'll also be inking the words at the top of the brown plate à la poupée using a bright red magenta-type color.

Gestation and Aquatint Planning

Progress on my multi-plate color print (which is...not printed in color yet).

Today I spent a few hours painting hard ground on my plates to block out areas that I don't want to bite for aquatint. I also spent some time figuring out exactly where I want the aquatint tones, which plates they should be on, and how long I should bite different areas. I haven't really done much with aquatint, so this will probably be a challenge for me. Here's to hoping that I don't completely mess it up! Below is a photo of me attempting to plan the tones using ink washes. Aquatint test strip is close at hand for the sake of figuring out how long I would need to bite to get different tones.



I also decided that I will only be making two plates. The third plate would have had so little on it, I decided to switch a few things so I could just put those details on the second plate.

And, finally an update on my big print, titled "Gestation." The below print was created before the plate was finished, so the edition is slightly different. I'll get a photo of it eventually (and the two colored prints I made à la poupée). This print was conveniently tacked up on the wall, so I took the opportunity to photograph it.



Surface roll (dark red/brown) + stenciled surface roll (pink).

Cycle III

Title: Cycle III
Size: 8"x10"
Medium: Aquatint
Edition of 5 printed in black ink on white paper.

Of the three prints in the Cycle series, this one was the most time consuming to produce. However, it is by far the simplest in terms of concept. The phases of the moon--a grand cycle that can be seen all over Earth and that influences us and our world in more ways than we can imagine. I love how something so enormous can be contained within a neat grid, so deceptively simple.

Despite the straightforwardness of the concept, it was very difficult to create this image on the plate. Also--perhaps you've noticed already--you can see that I made the mistake of creating the image the wrong way. I should have made it backwards on the plate so it would print correctly (with the phases reading from left to right). Instead it reads from right to left. D'oh! Rookie mistake, right there.

I created this plate using aquatint. The plate was aquatinted and bitten to pure black, then areas that I wanted to be lighter were scraped and buffed to smooth out of the surface (producing the light areas that you see in the print). I created the circles by tracing the bottom of a cup and traced the top of the cup for the large full moon in the center. The rest was all scraping and sanding.

Although I like the simplicity of this print both in terms of design and concept, I am still unhappy with many small details. The phases do not smoothly transition into one another, and the edges of some of the crescents are wobbly and not as smooth as I'd like. I definitely want to try my hand at this technique again--at least now I have some idea of what I'm in for.