Thursday 2nd October, 2014

This morning we had a lecture and were given our first brief for Contextual Studies by Adam.
I was initially confused about the brief but wanted to go away and figure out my next move. I understood I had to write an introduction to this module in a blog style or negotiate another way if needed. I decided to think about how I was going to approach this module before starting!

Etching!

Being back in the workshop was the highlight of my week!

We had a etching demonstration today, I have etched before but I wanted to refresh my mind!

Turns out I was missing a few steps last time, for best results we had to clean the copper before doing anything, so we used wire wool and a steam cleaner for metal and wearing gloves so we didn't put anymore chemicals onto the copper. 

 We learnt about the various ways of masking out the acid from the surface of the copper to create the etching effect.

We could paint it on with black stop out paint, parcel tape, nail varnish and black sharpie markers.

I discovered the parcel tape didn't work very well, this piece was in for about 40 minutes and the tape  drifted away from the copper in the acid but it left a very interesting effect on the surface, like a satin finish.

Then if we used black polish we could clean it off with paint remover but this is very difficult if your design was precise because you can't check fully how it will appear without the polish until you remove it. 

We also we shown how you could finish an etched piece, buy using liver or sulphur which I have used before but I would like to experiment more with various solutions.