I've had a small etching plate in reserve for the last few weeks, and each time I've been waiting for stop out to dry, or for a plate to bite I've been getting on with this plate.
It all started (as most of my work does at the moment) with a visit to Westonbirt and a bit of a sketch...
...and then a play with a marbelling effect in the print room...
...I painted the image with stop out...
...then added aquatint to give some depth and contrast...
...then brushed in some more stop out to take the starkness out of the background...
...and finally burnished the aquatint so that the cave like effect of the path through the trees was taken down a notch...
...and printed the final image in Sepia. No matter how mysterious or foreboding a dark path into woodland looks there is always a warmth in the trees themselves - the black was too stark.
When I'm working on big plates it can be hard to make small adjustments and see the benefit as quickly as this. These little plates allow a faster learning process and another layer of experimention.
