It was during a workshop with Brenda Tye in September 2017 that I first explored drypoint printing. We were given a piece of drypoint plastic and an etching needle and told to scratch our design into the plastic before inking and pulling a print. With limited time and non-existent experience I turned to an image of some trees I had taken along.

Above left is the scratched plastic and on the right is my print. The class involved learning several techniques and we didn’t get to develop our drypoints further, but I recently liberated it from storage to use in new projects.

My first project, entitled Fear, Despair, Hope, is not yet completed and will be posted later. I’ve been simultaneously working on After the Bushfires and the drypoint plate has been extensively reworked for this.

Above left is the first trial print after having worked on parts of the trees. Always worth having a look as you work through stages. The right hand image shows it progressing.

Next stage will be the addition of colour, further imagery and more definition.