"Sandhill Crane (With East Palatka Holly)"

This is one of the final states of "Sandhill Crane", but the last one before I was able to buff out most of the blotchy plate tone on the copper with fine steel wool. I have no idea where the blotchiness came from; it appeared on the plate after I etched it. I won't allow any of my plates to contact the plastic in the padded envelopes I use to store them now; usually I wrap them in newsprint first to store. I used this last artist proof to experiment with a watercolor tinting and this is how it came out.

"Sandhill" is printing nice and clean now; my best one went up to the annual Roycroft Artisan At Large jury up in NY and the other one (nearly indistinguishable) is going into a frame for the Tarpon Springs art show next week, as is this one.

6"x9"; Graphic Chemical bone-black ink on white Rives B.F.K.

Remember "Remember!"?

I revisited this little etching from last year. This was a quick, sketch directly on the hard ground with a stylus; I did a little pencil thumbnail reference first that I looked at but didn't want to spend a lot of time on it. I haven't been entirely happy with it; I added heavier lines after the first etching and they're kind of clumsy. I miss the first, wispy sort of look to the sketch.

So, I wanted to add it to my art show inventory coming up and I experimented with adding watercolor to one that had a more sepia tone overall.

I did a little bit of burnishing on some of the heavy lines around her face to soften them. I also steel-wooled the whole plate with a little 3-in-1 oil to take off any extra plate tone still hanging around. It printed much cleaner than the last time I tried. I kind of like the watercolor tint but don't have time to do another one until after the Tarpon Springs show on the 2nd-3rd.

These are small: 2.75" x 2.75". Since we get one of these little plates at the beginning of each session of printmaking at DFAC, I think I have enough to do a Tarot deck at this point or something...

Graphic Chemical umber ink on Rives B.F.K.