Megalo print studio

I am now a member of Megalo print studio and today I did my WHS studio induction. The airy studio's and gallery are conveniently located near the Canberra Glassworks. I have some ideas for the Depths & Shallows exhibition that I would like to produce as etchings.

The studio's are beautiful, well supplied, staffed & stocked at very reasonable rates.

Printmedia - 11 etching

I inked up my soft ground plate and the aqua tint that I made over the holidays. I haven't got the hang of aqua tint yet.

Printmedia - 10 etching soft ground

Aquatint

first layer of bitumen after acid

Since the print studio was open (to anyone) 3 days over the holidays, so I had to go in at least once..the glass studio is closed in the holidays to undergrads. Since I had stuffed up my first griffin plate in the aqua tinting process, I planned the second one with more care..

first layer of bitumen before acid

second layer of bitumen

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A wall of Griffins

I totally ruined my first griffin plate with my inexperienced and slapdash idea of aquatinting..so I made griffin plate 2..with some experimentation with line and inked up in black and then some colours. The glass studio was closed today, so headed over to the print studio. Later I tried some watercolour hand tinting..I think I like just the ball of wool coloured.

Studio day - etching / Aqua tints

I started the day by making a sheet mould, while that was drying I headed over to the Print media studio to finish my aqua tint and print it. I'm not to impressed with my results..I hadn't really given thought to how I was going to tint the image..and it took a while to get the back to front process straight in my head..so after lessons learned I'll start again with the Griffin.

Studio day

Public transport aside this was a productive day. I had a meeting with Marcus to discuss the ins and outs of casting furnace glass and possibilities for the mechanics of the revolving maze. Some good ideas for making the model were suggested too..good half hour!
I screen printed the slices of bullseye for the tree and put them in the kiln for the enamel to fuse.

Then later I went back to the print studio to press more etchings, this time with 'better' paper. I wanted to print the Gryphon in red..Claude did say that red was a problem colour..being a bit transparent. When you look at that tub of thick rich colour it's hard to imagine...but she was right. I fiddled with leaving more ink on the plate (as you can see)

Printmedia - 5

This afternoon we had our first etching workshop with Claude. This is something I have never done before and it's fascinating. We bevelled, cleaned and coated our zinc plates with hard ground (as illustrated)