Dream house

Since the photos were done, I have been working on the sky for "Dream house". I mentioned that I am using four copper plates. Each plate is inked with a different primary color: red, yellow and blue. The fourth plate is inked with black ink. The challenging part about printmaking like this is the fact that when I am working on the etching, I do not see the results until the image is printed. I am working on copper plates, and that is what I see in front of me. I have to be thinking about the color (and how it will combine with the others) while working on one of the plates. If I want green I have to combine yellow and blue with varying amounts of red and possibly some black. It is possible to achieve an infinite number of color combinations.

People who work in painting become accustomed to painting a color and seeing that color as they apply it to the paper. That is not the case with etching. The color is finally seen after the plates have been etched in the acid, inked and pulled through the press combining colors from all of the plates. The uncertainty is great, but with years of experience, it is possible to anticipate a bit. This is not a medium for control freaks. There are those of us who have learned to take a good amount of delight in the uncertainties of the medium and work within that realm.

Back to the "Dreamhouse" sky. I have been etching the red plate using soft ground and textures. I have also been etching the blue plate using marbling and aquatint and the black plate using marbling and no aquatint. There is no aquatint used on the black plate, because I want to have layers of the dream like marbled shapes, but black (by its nature) can tend to overpower the other colors. With no aquatint, it will tend to be lighter and a little more ambiguous. All of these plates are being lowered slowly into the acid to get a transition of etching depth. The darkest, most intense colors will be at the top and will gradually fade to nothingness as they get closer to the horizon.