Etching

This is the first update in a number of months, I thought I would start with some etchings from a few years back. They were done when I came back to my studio in Yorkshire after a hideous bus trip to Amsterdam.
This image is of night, somewhere in France or Belgium. I used a rag to daube extra ink onto the plate for a painterly effect, whose un-reproduceable qualities make it a Variable Print.Basically, its a method of adjusting the amount of ink on the surface of the etching plate to create the dramatic atmospheric effect. This place was dark and forlorn and made all the more so by a bunch of techno-kids who pulled up in a VW golf, all loaded up on uppers. It was the Gend'arme and their dogs that scared everyone the most. Even though the techno boys were wearing cowboy hats in Europe.

To illustrate the technique, this image is more or less a straight print.


This is the same etching with "inky effects" This is the Lieddeseplan Square on the edge of the Red Light district where i stayed at the crappy Bull Dog cafe in 1992. What a dump, the guy in the bed beside me held back vomiting for 3 hours from 6am till 9am and then went back to the bar to stay drunk.
I was walking by this place in 1999 in the aforementioned bus ride and was struck by panic to see the place again.I decided to sit and draw the passers by.