Printing the 'Moseley Pearl' plate

The latest plate to be completed was the 'Moseley Pearl'. I had some difficulties with etching the aquatint stages due to a problem with the water supply in the print room. Instead of the initial 'bite' in the acid being 30 seconds, it was more like 2 minutes as I was unable to wash the plate straight away. I knew this would affect the tonal range of the aquatint, but there wasn't time to start the plate from scratch (having already spent several days on it).

So I had to go ahead and finish the etching and hope that I could rescue the plate at the inking stage.
As the background was darker than I had planned and some of the detail was lost, I used a burnisher to work into the aquatint to bring back some of the highlights.

I tried inking the plate up in several different shades of blue/green so that I had a range of prints to work on. I wiped the plate thoroughly to try and maximise the tonal quality that was there.

I then added spot colour to the prints using watercolour washes. I am still not that happy with the finished prints. When I have more time I would like to redo the whole plate.