I first of all made three very simple dry-point plates using the plastic "glass" from some cheap IKEA frames. I inked here up and printed them on the etching press at college. Normally you soak the paper for this process. I tried putting a sheet into the soaking tank - and of course, it instantly started to fall apart: hand-made paper is not strong enough for this kind of treatment!
So I pressed on using paper I had dampened slightly by wiping it with a damp cloth just before printing. However, a second problem was that the roles on the press had been adjusted wrongly so that the pressure was uneven, and the prints came out a bit lop-sided. I quite liked the results, even so - they are rather faint, rather grainy, but work well on some of the first batch of paper, which has quite a lot of tiny bits of text showing randomly here and there.
I subsequently had another go, once the press had been adjusted correctly, and these were also rather nice. The images are just very simple scratched scribbles - but they are not unlike some of the 'not-writing' drawings I produced for my Pathway Project.
I also made some plates using the "poor man's etching" method, i.e. by cutting into the surface of card which I had painted with shellac to give it surface and strength. I made three small designs, each one based on the idea of tearing something into strips - which is of course what I've been doing with my re-cycled paper.
These printed pretty well, without me having to dampen the paper much, or at all in some cases. I think there was quite a lot of ink on the plates - the rough cut surface of the card absorbs quite heavily so there was a good lot to transfer onto the dry paper.
This time I printed some onto the paper made of clean white copier sheets and - not surprisingly - the results are clear but rather dull. The prints onto the greyer, grainy, paper with occasional glimpses of the old text, are much better.
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