Seika classes: Etching

As one of my optional classes I picked etching class for the friday.
I got to choose between Visual Media and Etching, but chose etching in the end because I love making prints and because I had never done copper plate printing before and it is something I can do back in NL too.
At the beginning of my first class I got a sheet with the semester overview, painstakingly translated by my etching teacher who I found out is very keen on learning English.

Every 3 weeks we got to learn a new etching technique and after that for each technique 2 weeks to experiment with it. I total I will be learning 4 new techniques. As I am writing this I have learned 3 already and this coming friday will be the fourth and final technique.

of course, first the preparing of the plate.

The first technique we got to learn was drypoint. Which is just scratching your design into the prepared plate, inking it in, rubbing the ink off so that it is only left in the lines of the design and then print.
I am constantly sketching up a storm everywhere I come and I use these sketches for my prints and also for my own personal lino prints.
Excuse me for the bad photos, we did not have much time photographing them as the works were taken at the end of each lesson by the teacher assistant.
Based on Japanese traditional elements it explores furthering into my encounters with it, the depths of it and the strangely unreachable.
These works are in concept a continuing on a series of works I have been making the last half year back in the Netherlands. You can check those out here: http://evitadevos.nl/node/78
and here: http://evitadevos.nl/node/66

Drypoint:

The next technique was called, just, etching..
Rolling in a fresh, newly prepared plate and rolling a ground material on the plate. Then scratching the design in the rolled material and putting the plate in acid for a certain amount of time. The long in acid, the darker the lines. The acid eats away at where you scratches and deepens the lines.
The result of that, made while writing a short poem/haiku about the rain as I cycled past the rice fields in Iwakura.

Etching:

rain on the fields
The croak of frogs
a bike ride home

After these two techniques, so after 7 weeks, we had a critique at which you had to pick a b/w print and a color print of each work you made and talk about the concept behind it.

the first group of students getting ready.

These were the four works I presented.
The teacher was pleased and said the sense of concept, composition and execution of technique were very good. She said "very very very very very good" at which the whole class laughed and so did she, then she threw an angry look at the class and said "no, seriously, no joking, it's very good"
She's very funny and I get the feeling every student really likes her. But I didn't expect such a feedback because she can be very critical of students work and doesn't praise quickly.

Then on with the techniques!

The third technique was called softground.
Rolling in a new plate again with the same ground material that will end up in acid but instead of scratching into it straight away you use a piece of tracing paper to softly draw your design in. At this point you can also use different materials like fabric of paper or whatever actually to be pressed into the ground material of the plate and for it to be part of your print.

The brownish print you see below is a ghost print from the ground material while I was pressing the weeds I am using into my plate. The second photo is just my pencil sketch layered over the ghost print. The third is the pencil lines I used to press into the softground pate.
The last one is the actual color print of this technique.

This print is an ode to Japanese writer Miyazawa Kenji with elements such as rural life, agriculture and train tracks.

Now one more technique to go.
I will update this page for the final prints and coming critique when they are done!