TATOOED LADY!

Second week of our session, good to get started. Once you have done your drawing, thinking and looking at the reference. Yes most of the picture you are drawing from is there. What I feel within myself is for you to draw freely from within yourself. You can always look at references but you are a different person drawing.
Below are some of the stages required to make a soft ground intaglio etching with aquatint.

After drawing the next step is to file the plates edges  to be nice and smooth

Using Brasso polish the plate to remove grease and grime so the etching machine is nice and clean with no disturbances placed upon it

Here's the soft ground etched plate ready to print

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Once you place your plate onto the press make sure its at a good angle with paper on top and print

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Here's Rachel rolling it through the press, not knowing how it will come out!

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Once it does come out, looking at what you have drawn can be quite joyful. It may come as surprise of what you have placed out.

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With this soft ground you can add a texture, we used a piece of lace and etched this onto the plate

After printing again, here is our next step printed.

After applying the aqautint we stopped out the part of the drawing we didn't wish this section which is dark to print darkened.

This is the final product from the plate as you can see from what we darkened with the stop out is much more clearer to look at.