SNU. Images made blank by Blogger. Copyright belongs to me. They are prints from copper plates showing examples of black inks on smooth white somerset satin paper. Images were of Jon, seated on the ground in front of a hedge and a garden in Southwold.  

SNU. Once the plates were made i set out to try all the black inks on the print workshop shelves to see how they compared. My background is in textiles and before that i did some ceramics and testing and sampling are key to my creative process. Again it is hidden learning, knowing my materials allows me to make an informed choice about what i need to use to get the result i want. The inks that I used were strong black, bone black, graphite black, soft black, drypoint black and velvet black. Each handled a little differently, lay on the plate differently, and subtle differences of colour and tone could be seen on the prints. I'm not sure how clear this is in the photographs of the prints. Later i tried two Charbonnel sepias; warm sepia and raw sepia. I also printed these plates with extender on two different papers but the prints are too subtle to show in a photograph. My intention was to work into one of these prints with a view to learning about hand colouring prints but time has not allowed me to do this. Another advantage to making all these sample prints was that repeating the process over and over again means my body now holds that memory.