My Students

Over the course of the school year my students learn the all of the major types of printmaking - relief, intaglio, planographic, and stencil processes. One of the major gaps in what I've been able to teach them has been etching, but acquiring these materials would allow them to learn it!

My school is filled with smart, responsible, and talented students.

They genuinely are excited about learning new things and new ways to explore their creative potential. The students come from a wide range of backgrounds, but still come together to form a community that is very supportive and positive.

My Project

First I will teach the students about the history of etching. I will show them works by famous artists who used etchings in their own work - from Rembrandt to Goya to Posada to Picasso. Then students will create their own etchings. First they apply a coating of an acrylic emulsion to a copper plate. Once that dries they scratch a drawing into the acrylic, revealing a thin copper line. Then they place the plate into the vertical etching tank into a solution of ferric chloride. The ferric solution slowly eats away at the exposed copper lines, "etching" the drawing into the plate. Once etched, the plate is cleaned off, inked up, and printed! My hope is that I would also be able to team up with our chemistry teacher for an arts integration project. It would be interesting for the students to learn more about the chemical reactions from a scientific point of view before making their prints.

Many of the students in my class end up going on to study in art, design, and other creative fields in college.

They're so lucky to be able to learn so much about printmaking in high school, but being able to add etching to the curriculum would fully round out the learning experience. This would be a fun project that is a very different process than any of the other types of printmaking they currently are learning.