I had a great day on Thursday. It felt really productive as I managed so much: I re-etched the plates that had gone horribly wrong the day before, printed it, etched some lino with caustic soda and produced a lithograph.
I was rather annoyed to discover that the korns crayons I'd bought for the lithography don't work on poly plates. They made great marks and seemed absolutely fine, but as soon as I added the water they just washed off. I'm wondering whether I could use one of the metal plates I've bought and it would work on there, I need to do some further research. I used a sharpie and Biro in the end for my lithograph, which are not my natural or ideal drawing materials, I'd rather something you can get different marks with so I need to explore further what I can use to get more pencil or crayonlike marks on poly plates. I used relief inks this time and got far less scumming, I also tried using toothpaste to remove ink that built up on the white areas and it worked perfectly. I tried both wet (below right) and dry paper and a ghost print so now have an idea of the type of results I can expect.
I was really pleased with the etching results. I put two very thin coats of hard ground on the night before and left them overnight, fully dry and scratched into it with a couple of tools, I discovered my dip nib (homemade) doesn't work in the hard ground so will try again with a very thin layer of the soft ground on this. When I put the plate in the etching solution, only the parts that I'd scratched went black, so I was able to get a really good clear white print. I overlaid the plate onto yesterday's disaster print from the same plate and that produced a really interesting image. It's making me wonder if I could use etched lino alongside the etching to get a real variation of marks going on in one print.
The other experiment I tried was whether I could re-soak a print with safe wash ink on it - would the safe wash ink stay put? There was a hint of lift of the ink onto the blotting paper, but very minimal.
This is the plate overlaid onto yesterday's disaster print - I prefer it with a background. I also printed the ghost (bottom print) just to see how much ink I was leaving behind. I feel like I'm mastering the basics of etching now. I need to sand the plate to 600 grit but no more, soy sauce is working well to degrease and really thin layers of the resist seem key to making that work.
I want to try combining etched lino as a background with an etching. I also want to use etched lino in a print, I think it could work well for the sky and/or the tree line.