I’ve begun working for a series of artworks on Mallorca, the Spanish island. The idea came when I was thinking what I might give my father as a present for his 80th birthday, which will be on August 25 this year. He is very fond of this island. I have been there twice, in 2005 for the first time and again in December 2007, and I have taken some photographs which I would like to use as inspiration.
I thought about developing prints from the photographs. Initially I was thinking about doing some linocuts but after I had talked to my friend Claudia about the idea, she suggested I might like to try etching. We met and she introduced me to the technique, and I did two A5 etchings into a thin plexiglass plate.
I have another A4 sized piece of plexiglass here and will see to do two more etchings. We are planning to meet again this or next week-end and then have a go at making prints from these plates with a printing press. I’m really excited about this!
These are my first tries with the new technique. The first motive I chose was a small street surrounded by half-height stone walls. These are very typical for the small countryside routes on the island. The second was a brown goat which I saw on an excursion to the mountainous coastside. I’m not sure whether the first etching is clear enough to recognize the street, the stone wall and the trees, so I thought I might later colourize the print to improve readability of the image.
The etchings in plexiglass are somewhat difficult to decipher. This also represents a challenge when working on the surface. Initially I had placed the plexi right upon the drawings to get the main outlines at the correct position, but then I put them onto a white sheet of paper because this makes the scratched lines come out more clearly. While working, I had the photographs in front of me on the computer screen. I tried not to become too detailed, I rather wanted to obtain a loose and sketchy impression.
Later that day, I made a free-hand drawing in pen and ink from another countryside photograph. It was also a small road with a stone wall next to it and some trees on a meadow to the right. I think the trees are ancient olive trees, with their very dark wood and gnarly branches. I used dark brown and soft green ink and also colourized the drawing with very soft washes of blue for the sky and green for the meadows and grass. It’s an A5 size drawing on watercolour paper and I’m quite satisfied with it.
Another image I would like to print is that of an ancient illuminated town gate by night. I took the photograph at the occasion of a local festivity. This image wouldn’t work as an etching, because it mainly consists of very light lines into a dark background. But this might correspond well to the linocut principle: the marks that I cut away will be seen as light lines in the final print, if I use a dark printing colour on light paper. As a first visualization study, I made a pastel drawing with light yellow on black paper in A5 size.
But this format is very small and doesn’t permit to include much detail. The book into which I would like to put all the drawings for this series is A4 sized, so maybe I can use a slightly larger format for the linocut to permit more details in the work.
[to be continued]