Etching experiments

Over the past two weeks I’ve been experimenting with etching onto the ’pringles.’

 I find cemeteries and graveyards fascinating so I’ve been looking through my collection of inscriptions on gravestones for these images. 

I started with Charles Morelli. I found this enamal and wrought iron grave marker in a cemetery in Argeles-sur-Mer. I can’t find out what type of artist he was or how he died ‘accidentally’. His wife lived to be 87, dying in 1952.

 I made the images on the plates bigger than the edges of the oval as the handmade paper isn’t completely uniform and each one spreads slightly differently when it goes through the press

I followed this up with Jannet  Johnstone. I found this stone in a cemetery on Orkney. I l really liked the form of the lettering incised into the stone and the very simple imagery carved in a shallow relief. 

I tried to use the lettering and the view from the cemetery; it looked straight out over the sea. A beautiful but bleak landscape.

Unfortunately when I transferred the design to the plate the tones didn’t differentiate as well as on the PC screen so it wasn’t very legible.

I decided instead to use some of the very simple shapes from the gravestone behind the lettering.

 

The images transfer to the handmade paper but the paper does tend to stick to the plate. This could be a problem when trying to edition it.