When it goes wrong

... it is frustrating. That's because it costs money to get in the studio, not to mention time (I have to book annual leave to get into the studio in the day. Saturdays I'm at college, and it's usually too busy anyway. )

Making mistakes can be a learning experience, but not when you're not sure what went wrong, or how to fix it.

I want to do better, but it takes time and experimentation. I saw on a programme about fine art printmaking recently that big artists get master printers to do it for them. It can take 16 separate stages to arrive at the final print.  That's a lot of time and a complex process to produce something decent.

When I book my precious 3 hour slots, time whizzes past and that's it for the week. Plus you're competing with other people to get on the presses, to use the acid baths and the drying racks...

Bah...

So anyway, here is an example of one that went wrong. It has an aquatint, which you do in stages to apply different tones. In an ideal world, you'd be able to print a proof at each stage to see how it's going. No time for that. And finally it all turned out... grey.

Baaaah... 

To compare, here you can see an earlier aquatint I made with a range of tones, like it should be.

(And here is Goya, showing how it should be done. )

I really, really, really want my own studio. And I wish I could do this full time.