#now it's time to clean with petroleum... hmm the smell of toxic solvent... I can't wait 😊🥰

[doodlingwren]

After almost 2 weeks, I printed out the plate with the aquatint! 😳🤯

So... I posted this earlier on BlueSky, but I had to wait 'till I was back home so I could write down everything ^_^

In the end, I'd say this was an almost successful experiment. It gave me time to figure out some important stuff on how to work with this media. My conclusions on the subject:

It's better to use as protective varnish the black satin varnish and not the shellac, otherwise you can’t see the masked parts,

Also, if some parts need to remain white, do the protective layer before applying the spray for aquatint,

For the other parts, it’s better to use a thin brush + let the varnish dry a bit so it won’t bleed like crazy,

Probably a 10 x 15 cm zinc plate is very small for detailed work, but it was the only plate I had (oopsie),

If possible, do all the different layers of aquatint in one day.

The last one is the one I messed up the most 😂 I started correctly with deciding which parts I wanted to remain white + lighter shadows (see the neck), but then I waited for a week before doing the rest. I suspect ☝️🗣 somebody in the lab either changed the acid or added more copper sulfate, so the 2 different layers of tints I was trying to achieve later on had the same tone in the end because the mordant was stronger (so my carefully calculated time of immersion were wrong lol). In the future I will try to create a bottle of copper sulfate for myself to use, so I will be able to know exactly what the different times of immersion are and (hopefully) the strength of the acid will remain the same throughout the process 🤔

Here's a very, very fast June etching/engraving I did as a test for something else (unrelated to StS).

This photo is a memento before I destroy it completely by applying aquatint 😊💖

Oh yes, I used for the etching a zinc plate + copper solfate. Later, I've decided to engrave some lines with a burin because I needed them to be thicker.