Work in progress

Some future photoetchings me thinks ;)
The top one I am not sure about yet though, I might try to colour it digitally and see what happens.

Photo Etching part two.

As I said before I was going to go back to do more photo etching and the second time round take more pictures. Although now I realise I could have still probably taken more pictures... I think this will be it for now!

First of all the plate needs to be filed and degreased. This is not as exciting so skipping that part :P Once it's ready you take it to the Dark Room, which is filled with yellow light.

Next you stick a layer of your photec - the funny blue film that looks incredibly green here - onto your plate.

Then it goes through the minipress as it has to stick down well!

Then you pop bubbles, make sure it's all good, run it through press again and cut off the excess.

Next you put positive on your plate and expose it. No pictures of exposure unit I'm afraid!

After that it goes in a special bath that develops photec and all the unexposed bits come off. A bit like when you are preparing screen for screenprinting! This is probably the reason why I love this process so much :)

You then proceed and show it to Laura who makes a funny face.

Then it's the Acid Time! I have lots of black surfaces so mine goes in for a few minutes and if it's ok I then proceed to aquatint it. And then it goes back into acid, and when it returns....

...The remaining photec and aquatint have to be removed, so it goes in yet another bath. That's the last one though! Then we're ready to print.

Inked up plate!

And the first proof!

By no means this is finished though. I want the Moon to be a bit lighter than the rest of the image, so I tried to brasso out the face of the moon - results above, you can see my face in the Moon's face! :) I will keep going at it though, hopefully in 2 weeks time you will see the proper finished print though! (prints need to sit in a drying area for like a week...)

This is it for now. So here, have a picture of Katt Monsen:

Bassetting

I had a bit of an uncreative few weeks. I was working my bum off and these few drawings were lying around, scanned but not touched for a while... I think I go through phases of how much I can get done, and now the busy phase is back on :)

When it comes to pets I am mainly a cat person. But I generally love all animals with few exceptions (pests). So yeah, I do like dogs too! I don't know if I could pick a favourite kind. Bassets are definitely a runner up though! I am planning on drawing some "character" dogs, similar to jumper cats. So I did a few preliminary sketches of bassets just to get a feel for them. The last one is surely my favourite! I will do more though and yes, you can expect them here.

Jonah

Today I had a pretty good day. Worked only few hours, weather was lovely, I met up with the Norwegian one for watching her eat food... But most importantly, I made a new friend. His name is Jonah. Currently he is helping me with the art stuff, so he gets distracted from missing the ocean.

Thanks Rachael! :D