I have been worrying about not having anything exciting enough to enter for the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair this year, something that reflects what I've been doing since last year. I decided to look back at what I've been doing since September and realised I've been using natural materials to make my plates, or printing directly from them, so I thought I'd try using soft ground and pressing some lichen into it.
I was thrilled when it looked like it had worked (I carefully didn't etch it for too long) so I inked up the plate and ran a test print. The inked up plate looked absolutely beautiful. I didn't add the sepia ink to the top of the plate so it looked blue when I photographed it. I was really pleased by how well the lichens printed and having seen the inked plate I decided to add a sky and create a print that looked as though the viewer was looking out over treetops.
I used a hard ground to carefully add a very little definition to some areas which were ever so slightly haze or indistinct. I tried to do this very carefully and lightly so that the marks didn't stand out.
I then added an aquatint to the sky. I used stop out to create varying depths of etch. I was aiming for something that would resemble clouds so wanted some areas of which with slightly grey areas beneath and then areas with a deeper etch. I also slightly etched some of the areas within the lichen marks.
I ran another test print:
I decided that the area representing the trees really needed some colour behind it as the white looked strange.
I applied another layer of aquatint and very carefully stopped out the whole sky. This time I ran the test print in colour rather than just in sepia.
I was much happier with this. I played around with the ratio of sepia to green within the ink and continued printing.
I preferred the more green and the prints that have a deeper colour to the prints that seemed slightly more 'bland' in their colouring as below.
I'm really excited to have bought a little compressor to allow me to do the aquatinting. I would like to play with the variety of tones that might be possible from this, in a similar way to the manner in which I use rainbow rolls on lino. The fact that I can embed natural materials onto the plate to etch opens up a new sort of mark to me. I also wonder whether I might want to layer marks like this over a linocut. So long as I printed the linocut on the right paper I would be able to soak the paper and add the etching.
Technically I have lots to learn but I enjoyed being able to etch and test, then etch some more and test again. It feels as though less time has been invested in the plate than in a linocut which hours of cutting has gone into. The etching feels more playful and I know that if I make a mess I can use the other side of the plate or even just sand it right back so I don't feel like I need to be overly precious about the plate. Attending the workshop at CSM was very helpful as I learned that I don't need to etch the plates for nearly as long as I had been. The slightest mark will be reproducible.
I've collected lots more forest textures and popped them into the press so that I might have more natural things to play with.