Stags and Circles

To start off my sketching for my CD cover I wated to play around with some Dry-Needle Point Etching.  I did this in relatively thin plastic which allowed me to cut around the stags head which I etched into the plastic.  I wanted to use the edge of my plate to form the shape of the stag instead of having the usual dominating frame created by etching.

Along with my stag's head I also made four spheres with trees inside them.  I wanted to print these seperately and over the top of my stag.

 I ended up colouring in the tree with Ecoline (liquid watercolour) because the tree wasn't really showing up very well.  This was partially due to printing it at home and I haven't bought proper etching ink yet.

 I also tried printing my spheres on wripped paper I particularly like the spacey kind of feel of the one on the left.

So here's how the stag head printed, pretty cool I thought.

While I was printing the back of the plate got a bit dirty with the printing ink.  When I was printing the above stag head I saw on the protective sheet against the back of the plate that that was actually making a pretty cool print too.  So I printed a mirror-image stage together with the full-on face stag print.

I then tried printing my tree spheres.  They weren't great to be honest, you can't really see the trees.

So  then instead I flips the spheres over and used the other side to print.  I decided to go for a bubble effect because I think they are such magical things and that they fit in with the "Licht" theme of "Other Worlds".

This result I was very happy with.  I think the plates combined well together and the contrast of the coloured bubbles and the black and white deer gives it a more dreamy effect. 

I also really like the circular shapes, they feel kind and wordly opposed to other shapes.  It also seems to be a theme which pops up in the cover now and again: A Well, A Circle Dance, Will-O-the-Wisp orbs and potentially Rune Stones.

After having done a couple of sketches for song "Wind & Geige" (Wind and Violin) I also did a print for this, but I still have to make a good print of this one.