December 3, 2018

Drawn at Mike Meyer's studio in Cedar Crest, New Mexico:

This was another attempt at making a soft ground etching, directly from the model during a 3 hour drawing session.

At the end of 3 hours, the reverse side of the newsprint paper (which faced the copper plate with wet BIG grounds) was much more muddy than the pencil drawing on the other side.

Muddy reverse side

of the newsprint paper

Perhaps the reverse side looks muddy is because I brayered the BIG ground directly on the copper plate directly (as he does in the BIG video).  Perhaps this puts too much wet ground on the plate.  I brayered this plate with BIG grounds last Friday, and I thought it would dry a bit in the 3 day interim.  However, it is December and cold, which probably does not encourage drying.  The plate was still very wet before drawing, with the BIG grounds coming off when I touched the plate.

The most successful BIG soft ground experiment so far have been when I first brayered the BIG grounds onto a piece of newspaper, and then pressed the wet newspaper onto the copper plate. Perhaps this coats the copper plate with a thinner layer of BIG ground.

Will this plate etch well?

UPDATE (Dec 14):

This plate had about 2 weeks to "dry" (even in the cold weather).  However, it did not seem to etch at all after an hour in ferric chloride at Remarque Print Workshop in Albuquerque. So I did not bother to proof it.

Plate after an hour etch

in ferric chloride

at Remarque Print Workshop

Note, I left this plate alone for 3 days after I coated it with BIG grounds.  That was apparently not long enough for it to "dry" a little bit (though the weather was cold).