Another wonderful evening etching.

I have been working on this new plate for a few weeks now. We only go to etching once a week on Thursdays and usually after running around Santa Fe doing errands first, so we usually arrive late afternoon and work until 10 or 11. It's hard to go home and thanks to Eric, who always has some food cooking, we can stay the whole evening without interruption! I decided this time to methodically etch a plate without aquatint or dry point. So the bottom photo displays a steady progression of the results of adding the wax ground, etching the lines, cleaning the plate and printing the plate, then adding another wax ground and doing the whole process again and again. I think it helps with a greater understanding of the process. So many times in the past, especially with aquatint I have ended up with the plate being too dark and I have had to burnish a lot. I like this method, it has a little more control. I think it's almost finished, but I need to just darken the shadows and add a few more highlights.