'Robert' aquatint

I’m pleased with this aquatint of ‘Robert’. After getting excited by the results of ‘Ken’ the other week, I’ve gone on to try five more aquatints in the last few weeks. This has been the only successful one though, as I failed to prepare my hard-grounds successfully, and some of the acid bit through to create a ‘speckly’ texture. It’s all a big learning curve, he says philosophically. But I managed to rescue this one through the aquatinting to finally create something I’m pleased with. This is a particular favourite image. I’ve tried about five different versions of it in the last few months. After this first rough proof, I finally feel ready to actually print an edition from this plate. That feels pretty exciting and a step forward.

I’ve added some of the less successful prints here too. ‘Mr Bhatt’(left) and ‘Val’ (right) are tonally a bit flat. Next time I will prepare a test strip of different timings in the acid to help me bit a bit more careful with how long I put the plate in each time. I was a bit free and easy with this aspect, just trying to experiment. They have some nice qualities I think are worth exploring further though. In the ‘Mr Bhatt’ image you can see the ‘speckly’ texture I mentioned.