Etching: rock pools – Final stage

Further to my last post on this project here, I decided to have a go at adding some plate tone to the rocks.

Happy? Not even remotely. It was very hard to see where I was putting colour as the greenish parts in particular were mostly translucent medium and could barely be seen on the zinc plate. It’s a shocker. Let’s try to re-position the green ‘moss’ within the water.

After two attempts I realised that adding some plate tone in the rocks is making the whole composition very, very dull and unappealing. And the water is too dark and heavy, I can hardly see the linework within the water.

Time to rethink and evaluate my issues:

Rocks look dull, although the three-dimensional appearance of them is good.
Even though I’ve used a range of darker sepia and yellow ochre in different areas the colour differentiation isn’t coming through. Only the main sedimentary rock looks any different to the rest.
The water is too dark. It look freezing in there.
The green anywhere but in the water is not working.
The whole print is drab. I’ve lost the sunlight and life from it.

Solutions:

Abandon the sepia rocks and move to a clean mid-tone grey.
Abandon the plate-tone idea as it seems to ‘dirty’ the print. Hopefully with a simple line print with added water it will appear crisper.
Abandon any green on the rocks.
Use a minimum of 50% translucent medium to soften the weight of the blue water.
Lighten the water by adding more white into the blue.
Consider a touch of green in the water.

A definite improvement, although I’ve wiped the plate back a little strongly and the rocks haven’t got quite the presence I would like. Much lighter and attractive though.

Here I’ve achieved a crisp line image, translucent water with a touch of green to enliven it and a good view of the underwater markings. Very happy with this result.