I visited Toowoomba, stepping out of my car into another world: Autumn leaves, historic buildings, grand gardens and mist. So close to Brisbane and yet it has a different climate. It was a small class at The Glennie School, and the girls were working from images they had in their journals.
I was there to run an etching workshop with aluminium plates and copper sulphate, a technique I learned in the early days of the internet from Nik Semenoff D Litt, Artist-in-residence, University of Saskatchewan
He kindly answered my emails as I worked from a paper that he had published on the technique that he and Dr L.W Bader from the department of chemistry had developed, so that we could replace acid etching at Warringah Printmakers Studio in Sydney in the 1990s.
We used ink for the ground. It can be scratched through, etched, then sanded or wiped off. For tones we experimented with oil crayons. Inking was done with a water based printing ink that is very black and slow drying. We used the same ink for both a ground and for inking up the plates.
The mist had cleared for the drive back down the range through the valleys back to Brisbane and I thought about how much I like getting away from Brisbane, and all the good places I have been on these Flying Arts trips.
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