Chorus After Chorus

Alex was sponging on the Pro-Side on Friday, so Patrick helped me proof her stone. I thought it was going to be fairly easy, but I ended up having some trouble with it. It seemed to be etched decently. Here is what her drawing looked like:



And this is a close up of one section, showing the stone before and after it was etched. The image on the left is the stone with only drawing materials on it. Alex used crayon to draw the bodies, then filled the clothes in with tusche and added rubbing crayon some on the faces and around the bodies. After the stone is etched the first time, we wash out the drawing materials and roll it up in printing ink. The image on the right is what it looked like after being rolled up. If it was etched properly, it should look pretty much the same except a little darker. In this case, you'll notice the greasy tusche got completely black (which is what Alex was hoping for, I think). We lost a little bit of the detail with the rubbing crayon in the background, but overall it's still mostly there.



So when I went to print the image for the first time, I was having a lot of trouble getting the flat black parts on the bodies and the bottom banner to roll up dark. I wasted several sheets of paper before Rodney came over and put me to shame with his filthy selective rolling techniques. I think he also cheated a little bit by using a much better quality of paper to proof on. We increased the pressure on the press and modified my ink so that it was super soft. That seemed to do the trick and I was able to get an Approval to Print for Alex by the end of the day.

On Saturday, we met in the afternoon to proof Patrick's stone and finish the edition of Alex's print. Here is what Patrick's drawing looked like as Alex was etching it:



Alex seems to have the miracle stone and she got a good proof with relatively little effort. My editioning went good for the most part. My first print on good paper was a little lean but I was able to get the rest of them (almost) exactly the same. Now we just have to finish printing Patrick's stone on Monday.