Etching experiments

Richard Salley offers a comprehensive online course on etching copper and silver – I recommend it! I bought it in the Fall of 2020, along with all the necessary materials. But my health deteriorated shortly after that, and I never got around to trying the techniques.

I am working on a collection concept that has me super excited, and this past weekend I finally had all the materials, good weather, decent energy, and a flood of inspiration. Here are some of my experiments in copper.

Towards the end, everything finally started to click, and I was able to achieve the level of detail I was looking for.

The thing I was missing was putting the piece into water to release the resist – you get much crisper lines that way.

This learning and experimentation this weekend has been really fun. I love the level of detail I was able to achieve, and with my set up it’s practical to just do a few pieces at a time. T

here are some things I don’t like about etching, though. The main one is that it changes the texture of the metal, and that affects how the liver of sulphur attaches – it just looks a little messy to me. I’ll share some examples in my next post, along with some of my work in progress.