This was an experiment with soft ground. I wanted to know how to achieve soft drawn lines, rather than hard0-bitten ones, and it seemed that a layer of soft ground and pencil could work.

This was now a cleaned plate, with all aquatint removed in Mystrol. A layer of an oil-based soft ground was rolled on with a soft roller. I was careful to try to make this a thin layer, but hadn’t used this before, so was unsure about how long it should sit before going into the ferric chloride. The (Lascaux) soft ground I used at Capileira would harden after a while, because it was not oil based. I couldn’t get hold of that one.  I used a piece of soft paper- tissue, and drew through it using:

charcoal crayon

Hartmuth progresson 4B

Pencil 6B

Litho crayon

As can be seen, not many of the marks came out in the end. It could be that my soft ground was too thick after all. Or that the blacks were never going to show against the black anyway.The litho was probably too soft, but the harder pencils worked, and the line quality is nice. It could be that this needs a longer etch. I gave it 20 minutes.