Tuesday, October 8, 2019

Three Level Stones :D



This makes me very happy.

   After the last time I grained, with no success, I was convinced I was missing a piece of the graining puzzle. It turns out I was, but it was only a matter of seeing the problem from the other side. I think I have the gist of it now.
   I'm so lucky because my excellent teacher Rebekah from my class at Zygote last summer is willing to help me long distance. And I'm talking really long distance, because she is currently in the middle of a two month long artist's residency in Taiwan. So bless her heart twice.
    I wrote to her with my questions about graining and she sent back three whole sets of drawings that detail graining patterns and which one to use under certain circumstances. That was my ticket.
     Today, we started fresh with two different stones. I now have a student working with me who is a true problem solver. That is another piece of luck, a couple times over, because he can think and he is tall and strong, two things that I am not. Litho takes quite a bit of muscle, and it sure was nice to have someone to take turns with. And to help carry heavy tubs of water.
     Admittedly, the stones were pretty level to begin with. By the time the previous images were grained out of the stones (one of them was very dark, so it took a while. I'll have to remember to keep better track of the cycles so we know what to expect), the smaller stone was level, but the big one on the bottom was low on the edges. I was kind of discouraged, because it wasn't like that when we started. We had made the stone worse! My student had to go and I sat down with a thump to think about it.
   Then came the aha moment. Instead of thinking that the edges were low, I should be thinking that the center was high.
   If you use two stones that have the same problem as graining partners, like two convex stones or two concave ones, used together they will even each other out. One of the stones I grained last time was convex, so I hauled it out and used it to grain Fred, the bigger stone on the left in the photo. I did three cycles of 100 grit, dried it off, and yay. A level stone.
     We'll polish them next week, and then we can start drawing. Two of the stones will be used for etching charts, one for crayon and one for tusche. My student gets to draw on Fred.
    It's slow progress, but we're getting there. I just need to remember to look at things from the other side.



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