Rushing...

At the end of a semester in Etching, everyone is running around like a chicken with their head cut off... myself included. Trying to get those editions finished and last minute proofs through the blotters. It's cool to see the lab working like a well-oiled machine with everyone pushing out a ton of work. I finished/got sick of my grapes and moved on. Actually, I literally got sick. Massive head colds are not good times. Ugh. While I blew my nose into oblivion, I worked on a couple of plates.

First, a 9x12 zinc plate with a layer of soft-ground wax. The Prof. introduced us to this technique earlier in the semester. You make a rig for your plate with cardboard so it doesn't shift, then lay a piece of paper over top. I used charcoal paper, but generally you use something less dense. Then you draw right onto the paper and the marks you make get transferred into the wax ground on the plate. I used a ballpoint pen, since I'm so comfortable with them.


Got it to the lab without messing up the wax and dropped it in the acid for a while. I flat-etched mine for something like half an hour.

The result...

Having never used this technique before I was pretty blown away by how well it worked. It's not a great composition or anything, but WOW I didn't expect it to read the pressure with that detail. *amazed*
I added a bit more value in places and some very rapidly drawn branches (last printing day rush ^^) and kicked out a few of these.

It needs a lot of work, but I rather like the overall idea so I'll keep working on it when I have time in the Spring.

I took a little doodle from a sketchbook and put it on a tiny 4x5 plate. I haven't done anything abstract with any of my etchings, so I thought this would be fun. Not much to it. Only a couple of states, but I enjoy it. The blue is true to life. Very quickly mixed it thinking I might use it on the Scrub Jays above. I like it on this one though.

Needs some aquatint and further tweaking. Reactions from classmates were really interesting. It evoked very different images/ideas from each person. So...

what do you see?
:)

Tasty...

Don't hate.
They count as art.
They totally count.

Gingerbread for the canvas and Powdered Sugar for the medium.

You really can't go wrong.

OM.


NOM.


NOM.

Happy Holidays from the Alley Betwixt!

Backyard Bunch

Back to the grapes... that hardly look like grapes! Ha!
Too bad.
A couple of later proofs here in different inks with different wiping. The overlap of the grapes in the top right corner was a last-minute change. scrapeburnishscrapeburnishweeeeee.


The final edition has three ink colors. The overall green, the brown in the twigs, and a deeper blue-green for the touches of background. It's also printed on Arches Cover, which is a paper with a warm tone to it.

So glad to be done with this. Eesh. XD
Next, I'm working on a soft-ground drawing through charcoal paper and possible a tiny little plate if I have time. We only have four classes left. Time flies!

For the trees...

Here we go!
The transition from the portrait being scraped out and slowly turned into trees. I thought it would be fun to maintain some of the face, rather than scrape it out entirely.


This is probably the last print I got of it that was decent before the burr smoothed out. It's incomplete and not particularly strong, but the process was educational and I don't hate it.