Copperplate is quite a hard surface in comparison to zinc or aluminium. I haven’t etched on copper for a while. This was an old plate with an aquatint that provided me with a dark area from which I began the composition. The composition is based on an earlier work titled Maria found the “golden spike”, an oil on gessoed paper.
The term “golden spike” refers to a part of the early boundary within the Flinders Ranges where 635-542 million year old fossils were found. The significance of the find led the world science community to recognise a new geological period termed the Ediacaran period. The three printed images are firstly with red ink and then I tried a black area on top of the red. In the third image I printed red over dark grey in the background making it a little too dark. I needed to have a lighter grey under the red as a base. I then masked out the areas left as white.
Several attempts at a suitable base layer with trial and error.
More modification with the red layer.
The red could be made lighter by a further lightening of the grey base layer. At this stage I’m half way through the process.
Elaine d'Esterre 
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