Overcast Days

Snowy, overcast days are perfect for working with light sensitive plates. My studio has three walls of windows so on sunny days I need to be extremely careful when working with light sensitive film or plates to avoid uv exposure. Today's snow storm provided the perfect cover to freely work with the Solarplates for my current project.

3 Transparencies

 I was pleased to find that I could get my three transparencies to fit comfortably on a 14"x 16" Solarplate with very little waste. Hopefully, I won't need to re-do any plates because that can get expensive!

Exposure unit

I fired up my Nu Arc and exposed the plate first to the aquatint screen and then to the transparency. I went with 10 light units for both.

I found an old Maybelline makeup brush that was much softer than the mushroom brush I had originally been using. This guaranteed a much gentler wash out procedure.

I used a small vinyl magnet attached to a sheet of plexiglass to hold the plate in place during the developing process to stop it from sliding around  and make it easier to keep my fingers off the plate.

I reduced the developing time to one minute, removed the plate from the water bath, squeegeed it off and dried it with a heat gun. The plate was put back into the exposure unit for a post exposure of light to harden the surface.

Here's the new plate. Now I'll see if a shorter developing time yields better results. Fingers crossed.