Author: saravipond

My etching this term is part of a larger multimedia project that I started last year and has to do with my interest in documenting shifting identity due to aging and, in my recent experience, retirement.

The sand dollar is a common souvenir of the beach. It is generally the test or skeleton made of calcium carbonate (or whiting) that is left to become bleached by the sun and picked up by visitors to recall their time at that particular location. It seemed like a good metaphor for this project.

This particular print is called Bones About It as opposed to “no bones about it” which is a declaration of certainty.

This was my initial drawing:

I decided to change the format for my print. This was the initial print after etching the line for 30 minutes.

After 3 rounds of aquatint at 2 1/2 minutes , 2 1/2 minutes and 10 minutes.

Sketches of ideas for woodcut – I was inspired by Kathe Kollwitz’s self-portraits and the graphic quality of her prints.

My next step is to use a white grease pencil on black poster paper to see if I can get closer to what the woodcut would look like.

This is the small sample block which I used to determine how much detail I could get in achieving different tonal values in preparation for the larger block.

This is the image transferred to the larger board and repeated with a sharpie to improve the visiblity of the lines. I have begun by isolating the white areas.

At this stage I decided to run a proof to see if I had enough detail around the glasses.

The wood had a deep open grain despite 2 rounds of sanding – the second after my sample block showed the grain of the wood.

I don’t mind a bit of grain as it would break up the large area of black on the right but I think I will head off to Home Hardware to find some wood filler.

Plate with wood filler in the deepest grooves. Hard to work on the wood once you have printed on it. I also did some more cutting.

This was the best I got but needs a lot of filling and more sanding.