I have been working hard in the print room today printing the first 9 etchings of my 22 print series.
It is only when you ink up your etching plate that you can begin to get an idea of how the image will turn out. With print the artist most often has to relinquish a certain amount of control, allowing the ink, paper and any other variables to largely determine the outcome of the print.
The success of my prints today has been varied. It is almost an art in itself to know the exact moment when the somerset paper has dried enough to not blur the ink but is still moist enough to pick up all the detail. It wasn’t until my last few prints where I seemed to achieve this balance a bit better. Perhaps I am just a bit rusty!
I feel that the approach I take in creating my images upon the etching plate is not at all one of clarity and precision but more of expression. From looking back at the 9 prints produced today it seems that the ones which work better are those which are more ‘rough around the edges’ and perhaps less illustrative. This is something I must consider in how I approach the remaining etchings in the series.
There is no doubt in my mind that I shall need to re-print some of the etching plates, although, I have decided to do this once I have completed all 22. This is because I would like to see how they look all together. I am interested to see if the images of me at a younger age work better and whether I would prefer to focus on this area of my life.
Thoughts about how to further develop this particular idea arose whilst in discussion with Andrew Vass who queried the presentation format of my prints and the potential to display them in old photo frames. This is an intriguing idea which had already crossed my mind in relation to the family album thread in my work. For now I shall wait until I have finished all 22 to see how I feel about all of them. I may even decide to re-do particular prints with a different image if I feel the initial one does not work within the series.
