Patterns of Gabbro - on aluminium?

I had a good conversation with Liza (artist - Printmaker/painter) today on the phone about etching with aluminium and copper sulphate and salt. I experimented with this briefly in 2004 with Friedhart Kiekeben and had good results. Liza reminded me that it bites quickly, creating deep lines in 10 minutes. The aluminium has plate tone, making aquatint less important. I could glue carborundum grit to the plate to create a denser, darker tone if wished. It's so much cheaper than using copper which I have been using with ferric chloride.

If possible, I'll try to obtain some copper sulphate before June and try a few small plates and then work with Liza, larger scale, in June.

I do like the textural patterns of Gabbro so may well use this as a starting point for work on aluminium.

Visit to Dudley Museum and Art Gallery - Thursday 9 April

A fascinating day looking at rock through a microscope and 'capturing' it as images onto a lap top. I discovered that I particularly liked the textures of granite and gabbro. Looked up gabbro

and this is what I found:

Gabbro (pronounced /ˈɡæbrəʊ/) refers to a large group of dark, coarse-grained, intrusive igneous rocks chemically equivalent to basalt. The rocks are plutonic, formed when molten magma is trapped beneath the Earth's surface and cools into a crystalline mass.
The vast majority of the Earth's surface is underlain by gabbro within the oceanic crust, produced by basalt magmatism at mid-ocean ridges.

Gabbro reminds me of the kind of image you can create with trace monoprint and some of the granite textures look like wild etchings (probably with quite a lot of open bite...that's a note for any printmakers out there!).

I also looked at the impressive museum collection and read the explanations to better understand the whole story of the Silurian seabed. Had a look through some of the rock and fossil collection and photographed some things.

Graham (Geologist) was really busy and it was an unexpected bonus to witness him look at the rock that some members of the public brought in for identification.

I'm not sure if my pics were saved ok onto the laptop... need to find out!

Visit to Wren's Nest Wed 8 April

Revisted Wren's Nest today. It was early on a bright and windy day. Saw a man walking his pit bull - didn't engage in conversation.

I was thinking about the fossils and seabed and the ideas and images I was discussing with Jane yesterday. John had never seen the ripple beds before and was suitably impressed. Took my Fuji SLR and got much better photos.

closer to see the detail

Ripple beds and fossils. Collaboration with Jane

I tried out some ideas yesterday, drawing on True Grain drafting film. I'm considering drawings of fossils on one sheet of film and either a photo or drawing of the ripple beds on the other sheet. I'd then transfer them photographically onto film laminated copper plates, ink them separately (probably in different coloured inks) and print them one over the other onto the paper.

I was working on this when Jane arrived. We discussed our group trip to Wren's Nest with Graham and the moment when he held the fossils in his hand. Jane photographed this and she had the idea of the hand bringing the fossils to life so that they turn into the sea creatures that lived millions of years ago. A great idea for an image.

Also, these are the very fossils that Graham handed to me on that day and that I have been drawing. So it's all coming together...I'll do further research at the museum tomorrow and carry on drawing.