So I made solar plates from my three of my drawings. I made templates of certain areas so that I can use them to cut out handmade Japanese papers for the chine cole’ part of my etching.
And then I inked the plates and prepared the chine cole’ papers. And printed them… These are just a few of this next step... Next, I am going to hand color certain areas with my prismacolor pencils …. I have seven more plates of women in hats to make…. yikes and to PRINT !!!!!
I will give you a closer look once they are finished..
In My Printing Apron 
You know… I’ve been to meetings in church basements with those women. You’d be surprised to know the thoughts going on behind those prim exteriors. Or maybe not. 😉
Linda, Thank you.. that is my point… I needed prim exteriors to compliment the wild men in hats by John Pinkerton in our Gallery show… it will be fun.
Hello, thank you for your blog, it is very interesting and beautiful work! I have been researching making solar plates using my drawings and found your blog. Would you mind if I ask you whether you use a halftone transparency as an aquatint before exposing the photo/drawing? If you do, did you buy it? I am trying really hard to find information on either how to make the transparency myself or buy it but it has been very frustrating to find information. Many, many thanks! Regards, Laura Castell
Sorry that it has taken so long to respond about transparency making. I just saw your question in my email box just now. Yikes. Well if you haven’t figured it out yet, I will tell you how I make mine. Most of my transparencies are made off of my printer so that limits my size width to be 8.5 inches. Any thing larger, I take my drawing to a graphics place that will make a high resolution black and white transparency.
When using my own printer, I scan my drawing and in photoshop, I put the drawing even if it is a pencil sketch into the Grayscale mode. I adjust the contrast so that the blacks will be the darkest and the whites will be the clearest. You have to be careful not to lose your details or gray areas if they are important to your drawing or the outcome on your etching. I put transparency plastic paper into my printer. I buy it at any Office supply store like Office Depot or OfficeMax or the like. Be sure to get some that is compatible with your printer( they come in inkjet and laser) . Be sure that when you load your paper into your printer that the side that has a bit of a tooth is the side that you will print on if your printer is ink jet. I set my printer to Black Ink only output and chose the highest quality printing. Most have a transparency paper setting but I just over ride this. Print it and you should be ready to go. You want nice black areas and if you think that you need to make them blacker then you need to go back into photoshop and adjust the darkness. Remember that your etching plate will only be as good as your transparency. But you also will need to run some tests to see how the darkness of your transparency off of your printer is. It is surprising how much you can get on your solar plate . I hope this helps. And I will try to answer sooner if you need more help
Thank you so much Debbie!!! I am ready to go, witthe plates, etc etc, so your response is giving me the push I need. I was able to find a halftone transparency, but will try it first as you suggest. Thank you very much for explaining it in so much detail 🙂 all the best