This weekend I took a photoetching workshop with a friend of mine. It was a two-day workshop at the Sev Shoon Arts Center in Ballard. It is a great studio offering classes as well as full studio access to artists for only $100 bucks a month (that seems like a good deal to me, though I am no expert on this). Our instructor was Amanda Knowles, an artist who works here in Seattle and at Sev Shoon. In any case, it was quite an introduction to printmaking for me! I probably ought to have taken something a little less technical for my first venture into printmaking. Photoetching involves transferring an image from a transparency to another surface (usually metal) using a light-sensitive polymer film, an exposure machine, and some generally nontoxic chemicals. I actually used plexiglass, which I don't think can actually be considered true "etching", but that is more detail than I can comprehend right now. Once your plate is developed, you ink it and run it through the press. There were a LOT of steps to keep track of and skills to learn, definitely more than anyone can master in a weekend. But, I had fun and now I know a lot more about it. I think I would enjoy taking a few more classes at some point, too! Here are a few of my prints:
