Well, I am definitely learning, and that's why I'm here, so that's good. Getting this aquatint process down is a challenge for me & quite time consuming! The problem I had with this one was that I didn't get the etching quite right, resulting in a night sky that was not the deep black that I had in mind. My solution to this was to wipe the plate a little less over the sky portion, which gave this neat swirly effect. I like it. I printed this plate about 6 times to get the effect seen here. (Takes about 30 minutes per print to ink, wipe & print- just to give you an idea of the patience required for printmaking!) On the plate itself, there are stars (as in "Starry Night" below), but if I wipe the plate "properly" to show the stars, everything comes out with middle grayish tones- looking too washed out for my liking. Problem for me is, once I print a plate so many times, I get a little bored with it, so I have to move on to the next project. I spent about 5 hours working on another plate this morning. (You get down time- 20 minutes x 5 while the plate is in the acid... giving time to work on other projects, or perhaps go get a cup of coffee. :) The upcoming one has the same theme, with the night sky & tree~ just a little different composition... and hopefully with the darker sky & stars, as I had envisioned on this one. All part of the process, but dang those learning curves!
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