This is a painting I made a couple of years ago. It is pretty small, about 12" x 12". It happily resided in the glass fronted bookcase until I had a show. I sold it to someone who lives in Key West. This is nice, but I miss it. I decided to make a print kind of similar to it. I started with the same image and made a dry point etching. Dry point is much harder than you would think. You spend a lot of time scratching into the surface and then you print it, and it looks pathetic. So you have to go back and scratch some more. And then some more again. I got it to where it looked okay, but then I saw a show of Edvard Munch's prints. He combined different kinds of prints together, like he might print a linoleum block on top of an etching.
So I started to think that I could carry the dry point further by using a different technique on top of it. I put a layer of soft ground on top of the plate and pressed in feathers and pine needles, which were etched into the surface. I have to admit I was quite pleased with the final print. The image is reversed from the original painting, another side effect of printmaking. This crows head is less bumpy too, I think he looks a little bit like a mockingbird. We used to have a mockingbird that sat in the tree outside our bedroom window and sang all night. Maybe this is really a portrait of him.
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