Copper Sulphate & Salt Etching on aluminium plates

Last week I taught a week long intensive block course - Copper Sulphate & Salt Etching on Aluminum plates at The Learning Connexion www.tlc.ac.nz. It was good to revisit this technique. We used non-toxic methods: acrylic floor polish & Liquitex pouring medium as a hard ground, soda ash solution to remove the hard ground and Kremelta for negative and positive mark-making in a variety of tones. No need to aquatint aluminium plates for tones! The students printed their plates using soy oil based Akua inks on to good quality Fabriano printmaking paper. They created a wonderful variety of prints and incorporated the chine collé technique - collaging hand-coloured cartridge paper in between ink and paper

Students Hard Ground Etching

Fire Sparks 2011 by Basia Smolnicki. Copper Suphate Etching & Collage

Students Hard Ground Etching & Collage