Christmas Card

It's quite funny, really… I haven’t been in my studio for some time, so getting back in with a short deadline to create the Christmas card was a bit of a challenge. This is the last of three images related to Christmas trees. I’ve done Mistletoe and Holly, so Pine was the final one.

Proof of Card Design.

I knew the design, but to keep it interesting, I thought I’d give hand-shaken aquatint a try. I had seen this technique in the last few weeks at college and was a tad envious of my colleagues’ work!

My plate didn’t require this process, so I felt ‘late to the party’. But this was fun! I had a bag of chunky rosin, so I just played around.

I didn’t intend the look to resemble snow falling, so it was a happy accident that turned out well. Also, I was using saline and copper sulphate as my acid, so it was a bit of a blind experiment.

The only glitch. was the chine collé on the cone. I wanted to userently it didn’t want to cooperate. I tried all my usual glues, and in the end, it was spray mount that did the trick!

Drying the prints in time was difficult. They were under the blotters for less than three days. But the image was small, and there was not too much ink, so I decided to let them dry in the post!

Made a short video for instagram.