The making of this award-winning piece!

It all began in this basement print room at the Royal Drawing School, and a frustrating dream that drove me in circles. My tutor at the time, Rossen, encouraged me to get a bigger plate, taking a break from Peel Street. So I put together elements of each segment of the dream into this picture!

What is more challenging than creating the image was actually wiping the plate. I first learnt etching back at UCA and we wiped plates with rags there. Whereas at the RDS I was taught the traditional way to wipe by hand. The right amount of pressure to put on the ink to get a clean wipe was really hard to grasp. I had been using a block of wood with tissue for a long time until one day it finally clicked.

In the past, these were not necessarily printed by the artist who created the plate but obviously I wouldn’t have the budget for that so I had to practise until I could print to a sellable quality. So you can see in the slideshow or store page, some of the prints were underwiped and some were overwiped, i.e. image too dark or too light.

Slide below to see the development of the plate!

All of these are available too!