Preparing the plate and applying ground

PreparingTheGround1 So, it turns out that I didn’t degrease the plate thoroughly enough. After drying the plates I noticed dried on whiting powder in a couple of places so gave them another rinse, This showed up that the water was running off unevenly meaning that the plates weren’t degreased properly. For the second degrease I used good old kitchen favourite CIF, applied with a felt pad. This did a good job and after rinsing and drying the plates were ready to coat.
PHASE TWO – Applying ground and plate backing resist.
I’ve chosen to use Lascaux hard ground for coating the plate. This is quite runny and is clear so I added a drop of Daler acrylic black ink, poured some onto the plate and painted it over the whole plate with a flat brush. I did this with the plate horizontal and sitting on a piece of wood to raise it off the table top. It dried pretty quickly with a hot air heater blowing on it.PreparingTheGround2

PreparingTheGround3When the ground was thoroughly dry I turned the plates over and brushed on the pink Lascaux plate backing resist. This also dried quite quickly and the plates are now ready for etching !!