If at first...

 Every time my chum Sue phones me her opening line when I answer the phone is usually 'why aren't you in that shed working ?'  Well, I was up there before I went to Oxford for a few days, getting on with preparation of an aluminium plate for some saline  etching. A post on Jac's blog a couple of weeks ago reminded me of an image I'd put together 18 months ago from photos of a mistle thrush in the garden with some text I fiddled about with in Photoshop. Jac had been using the gum arabic transfer medium for getting her image on to a plate prior to etching and I decided to pull my finger out and do mine too after all this time.

So, the day before I headed off to my course I took my photocopies , inked them up and tried to get them centred on an 8x6 aluminium plate. Easier said than done but I was happy enough with one attempt to give it a try. I didn't heat the plate up to dry it out, just left it in the window until my return. Of course by then, six days had passed and the ink was rock hard and although it etched well enough I couldn't get the original background ink off the plate... and as I'd used burnt umber, the wiping was hardly a roaring success as all these proofs on the shed wall testify to. I was printing with Payne's Grey and could not see where I'd wiped and where I hadn't.

 During a phone call this week Sue suggested trying to get the ink off with Brasso and then my husband suggested TCut which was a success! Why didn't I think of that? So, I cleaned it and then I printed it again, trying a couple of two plate options as well. I can see all the things that are wrong with it but I like the image so I'm going to sharpen it up, try to eliminate the errors and do it all over again.

 And whilst I had some left over ink on the slab I printed a collagraph that I made last year and for some reason never got around to printing. Its about 8 inches square and I think I like it in the grey/black so might frame that one and see what it looks like in different orientations.

 I've spent two days in that shed this week doing all this and I wonder why I don't have more to show for the time but it's not important. Sometimes I need to remind myself that it is all about 'doing the work' and who knows what will come out of it. I have so many ideas in my head at the moment that trying to remember them and filter out the wheat from the chaff is a real challenge but onwards, ever onwards eh?