Etching

Ruth & I have been having fun in the studio this week with more etchings. Before you actually get to do the etchings you have to work out the design. Ruth, who is very ‘cluey’ on the computer (and is now my very own personal assistant) has shown me how to do ‘stuff’ with Adobe Illustrator. I was struggling with Adobe Photoshop and cleaning up images of stray pixels. It was taking me ages, but now it’s really a lot quicker in Illustrator. You have to have ‘clean’ images with no stray pixels when you print the image onto the paper ready for etching. Any stray pixels will show up in the etching and then into the silver. With Illustrator, it’s easier to get fine lines into the etching and the fine lines look really good in the silver when they are patina oxidised.

This is my image of a red back spider that I have made with Illustrator. This was then printed onto etching paper, transferred onto the copper, into the etching solution for a couple of hours. Then the silver clay is rolled into a sheet and the etched image pressed into the clay. The silver clay is cut out to shape, dried, sanded, fired in a kiln for 2hrs at 900 degrees centigrade, then polished and oxidised.

This is the finished pendant.