Crow: the making of a print

When I think about wild birds, I don't see them as fluffy, decorative things that are there for us to enjoy. I think of them as living creatures that have to somehow survive in all all weather conditions, and have evolved to have the best chance of doing that. I think about how hard that life must be for them, and wonder how we must look to them when we turn up in their territory.

Birdwatching, for me, taps into my fascination with natural history, which started as long ago as I can remember. I grew up watching David Attenborough documentaries, being taken for long and often muddy walks by my family looking for birds and other wildlife, and poring through nature books. I drew tracks from foxes and deer so I could remember what they looked like for next time we went out, and searched for owl pellets under trees (I never found any).

I've been wanting to do some etchings of birds for a while, but it was only when I started focus on drawing their feet that I found a way into the subject. Feet and beaks are specialised for survival, tailored for different habitats and food sources, and there is nothing fluffy or cute about that.

'Crow' is a hard ground etching with aquatint inspired by a crow I passed by a village pond. It watched me as it dug its claws into a wooden post against the wind, shifting to observe me as I walked past it. I think it was a young bird because it showed more curiosity than apprehension – but you never can tell with crows, because they're clever and generally interested in things.

I took a quick photo and then made an ink drawing, emphasising elements like the feet, the curve of the shoulder and the fluttering wing and tail feathers, which made me think of a dark cloak or robe. I also simplified the background (the pond, some grass and a path) to something more geometric to emphasise the manmade nature of the environment. The pattern on the post was made by keeping the pen moving constantly, making marks instinctively, symbolising where human order and wild nature meet.

I transferred the drawing to a zinc plate covered with hard ground and etched the lines before I added tone with aquatint. I wanted a density of colour to the black feathers but I also wanted some of the texture of the drawing to come through, so when I laid the aquatint over the top, I made sure to bite the plate in stages, leaving the darkest parts at the bottom.

What is an aquatint?

I editioned Towards the Forest on one of the lovely Rochat etching presses at Thames-Side Print Studio. Here you can see the metal plate sitting on the plastic template I made so I can get the paper straight, and the fresh print I've just lifted off it.

My aquatint Towards the Forest has been selected for the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition, so I thought I'd write something about how aquatint prints are made.

Aquatint is a technique used to create a tone in intaglio printmaking. Tiny particles of rosin powder are melted onto a metal etching plate and when the plate is placed in acid, the metal is eaten away (bitten) between these dots, which resist the corrosion. This creates something that will hold ink on the plate which, when printed on to damp paper with an etching press, will appear on the paper as a rich mark similar to watercolour.

Here's the plate for Towards the Forest before the final tones were bitten - the areas of the plate where the metal is still showing. As you can see, they appear pale here but will print the darkest, so I had to visualise the tones in my head at this point (and of course it is flipped horizontally when it is printed as well). You can see the different layers of varnish from the different stages.

The shade of the tone created depends how long the plate has been exposed to the acid. By painting varnish (stopping out) on to the plate to prevent areas being bitten further, and working in stages from light to dark by putting it in acid many times, a whole range of tones can be created. The bite is cumulative, so if you put the plate in the acid for ten seconds, stop out an area, and then put it in the acid again for 20 seconds, when you remove the varnish you'll have a lighter area (ten seconds) and a darker area (30 seconds, because it had already been bitten for ten seconds before the second bite). Writing down the times for all the different stages is essential, because it's easy to get confused!

I love this technique because it you can create painterly effects but it also has that magic of printmaking where you never know for sure how it's going to look until you print it. Using the aquatint process is exciting, challenging and gives a wonderful depth of tone.