Today was bringing together my photography and my relief printing.
Starting with a B&W photo with a lot of contrast – An old oak door in Ludlow, Shropshire:
Resized to 150mm on the longest edge to fit my aluminium sheet and printed on a laser printer onto glossy inkjet paper. Next cut the paper to size, spread nailpolish remover (acetone+alcohol) onto the plate and quickly place, not press, the print onto the plate face down. Leave to let the toner soften, then put paper towel on top of the image and put a second flat plate on top and weight down (an old iron doorstop). Leave for a couple of hours. Now take the plate with paper print attached and soak in soapy water to remove the paper. If all has worked – and it had – the toner remains on the aluminium.
The etching solution is 50g Copper Sulfate (amazon), 100g Salt in 500ml of water. Cover the back of the plate with duct tape to protect it. OUTSIDE – put the plate into the etching solution for 5 mins, gently brushing away the copper that gets deposited on the plate where the exposed (no toner) aluminium dissolves in the copper chloride. Lots of heat, gas and smells.
Remove plate, rinse well in lots of water and clean with nailpolish remover to remove the toner.
Lastly ink the plate as for linocuts and put through the roller press with fine Japanese paper and use a felt mat on top of the paper. Whilst there is room for improvement (in the quality of the initial laserprint, the toner transfer process and experimenting with etching time), I am encouraged enough with the outcome to explore this further – especially for atmospheric landscape images.
