Peach Mystery

 

K. Tschährä: Peach Mystery, 2022

Peach Mystery is my second etching. I made also this work at wonderful Printmaking Studio Himmelblau.

The technique I used is soft ground etching. It means that the ground on copper plate is softer and you can't use needle-pen. Ground is very delicate and it can even take your finger prints if you accidentally (or on purpose) touch the plate.

Thin paper was put on top of the plate and I draw the picture with 4B pencil (no sketching). You have to be careful not to puch pencil too much, the paper gets easily broken. But you need to draw hard enough that the marks will be seen on the soft ground.

Soft ground etching is more difficult than hard ground etching, because you can't see what is happening with the plate: are all your drawing lines there or not. In hard ground you draw directly on the plate so you see clearly what's happening.

Again the backside of the plate was varnished and then the plate was put into acid. Printmaker Marko Lampisuo explained to me that soft ground technique is always more mysterious than hard ground; also what happens with acid. We thought that half an hour would be good for the plate but in the end Marko had the plate one hour in the acid. Then the picture was clear enough on the plate.

Then Marko put the color on the plate, cleaned it well and printing machine did the rest. Very exciting!

Himmelblau's printmaker Marko Lampisuo at work.

Peach Mystery is a good name for this one. It looks like peach and making it was a bit like a mystery. It became great! Many thanks to Printmaking Studio Himmelblau and excellent master of printmaking, artist Marko Lampisuo, for his help.