Etching

Just before Easter break we had two introduction to etching classes at uni. This was first time I was doing etching and wanted to see how it works with typographic image. I took one of the designs from the project that I was working on at that time. It's the lettering for Patrick Süskind's "Perfume" cover (Penguin Design Award). This is the original image, a hand drawn lettering that I used for my etching:

The lettering is very detailed, I wasn't sure how this would work with soft-ground etching:

I did soft-ground first:

And then hard ground (swirls and ornaments):

And after that, I added tones using aquatint. I did two prints with different amount of ink on the plate:

I didn't know how this would come out and each print was a surprise. But this was all about just learning the techniques and I really enjoyed it! Here are the shots from the making of and the plate:

I found it very interesting, but didn't use any of these for the final version of the cover. Anyway, definitely want to play with etching again!