I made my first etched plates in 2016 and my first hard ground etching was some swans I had drawn.

This was pretty boring, simple line work, and my tutor at the time thought adding some water and sky would be good. He held the plate over the acid/water solution and proceeded to ‘paint’ the plate with the solution watching as the acid ate into the plate. When he thought the effect had been achieved he rinsed the plate and I went off to print it.

Here’s the plate and the print I did at the time.

What can I say other than I hated it, intensely. Swans on a stormy sea with a tornado in the background, really?

It’s been languishing in the cupboard for the last six years but this month it’s had the dust blown off (metaphorically speaking) and I’ve been trying to revamp it. Revamp? Maybe a total overhaul would be more like it.

I started on the water. Using a scraper and moving left to right I scraped away as much of the unevenly etched surface as I could, followed by a light burnishing. I’ve managed to eliminate the tempestuous sea.

Unfortunately the swan head is very delicately etched and it’s easy to over-wipe. I tried scratching the lines a little more deeply with an etching tool but it didn’t really work and it was hard to keep the tool in the existing lines without slipping out and ruining the whole thing.

I reprinted, adding some green to indicate shrubbery.

Above left: Completely over-wiped and there wasn’t enough texture to hold the green.
Above right: I stippled varnish over the bush areas (allowed it to dry before inking up) so now it holds the ink. Improving.

Moving to the top section I scraped away much of the sky, smoothing as much as possible and, using gesso, drew in some mountains.

This image shows the top of the zinc plate part way through this stage. I added 2 layers of mountains.

Note to self: Why am I doing this? Is it actually getting any better?

Well the answer is that whilst I don’t like the plate the experimentation is interesting. Adding stippled varnish to the surface along with gesso areas has increased the complexity of the piece and this experience adds to my options when considering how to manipulate works in the future.

Above left: The green looks great (best part of the print). I should have stuck with only putting in the higher, more distant, mountains. Now it’s too busy and the lower mountains aren’t right – there’s a disconnect in the imagery as well as the lower mountains grabbing the ink where the gesso meets the zinc along the base of them. The sky is better and the far mountains have scope.

Above right: I’m unhappy with the blue ‘shadow’ near the swan neck so tried carrying the green across the whole plate. Still a rubbish print.

More alterations required, so I scraped away the lower mountains and added more stippled foliage. I’d like more variety in the mountains as well. They’re quite flat.

So here’s the final result.

Not the best thing I’ve ever produced in my life but a very interesting couple of weeks developing a discarded plate into something really quite different.

So, the question is this: is my etched zinc plate now classed as a collagraph because I’ve added media to the surface – gesso and varnish? I’ll leave that to the viewer to decide.