Approaching the last weeks before easter.

Monday 09:00- With one of the lecturers away today we had a talk and practical workshop of learning plate lithography printing, Something i do wish we learned a bit earlier on in the semester, as it gives the opportunity to take them out with you to sketch on, and also fairly in expensive compared to etching. 
After the talk i finally got round to printing my stone from a few weeks ago, and grained it off, not quite yet sure what i'm going to draw on it but its always exciting to have a clear stone. 

Overall i was happy with the prints i made, and was excited to add watercolour to a few of them. With my lecturer going to china the next week, it made sense not to start a new stone until he got back after Easter and start on some etching, as with etching i feel i can do a lot of it on my own, where as lithography i still need help with. 

Wednesday: I had this wide landscape aluminium plate that i bought a few weeks ago waiting to know what to draw out on it. Looking through my sketchbook for possible ideas i found a sketch from Aberaeron which i drew out for a possible painting, but felt that it may work better as an etching, my plan was to  have a George Chapman esque feel to it, with him being my artist of influence on my series of prints this semester. His prints are often dark and scratchy with lamp posts and blurred out figures. After etching it lightly to get the out line of the drawing, i took the ground off, and put the whole plate in acid to a very dark colour and then scraped back to get some of the light colours, the plate wasn't as dark as i thought it was going to be, but as an aquatint on an aluminium plate i was impressed with how it came out, however compared to copper plate, the prints were not quite as nice as copper, so for my next series of prints i decided to go back to copper. 

Friday: I came in to finish the plate and get a few prints ( this being one of them). I made a few with the same colour and some more in other colour's but i feel that the sepia colour works best, Overall i am pleased with the result,, i feel hat i could have made it slightly darker, but because of how deeply etched it was the ink was getting trapped and the tiny holes were holding a lot of ink which made the plate very hard to wipe to the correct level, with out smudging the lines too much.

Saturday : A flying visit home for the weekend for my nephews Christening on Sunday, was lovely to see everyone, but like always was too short. ​