(Mis) Adventures in Lithography

With home ownership and a workshop looming in the very near future, I anticipate this will be the last print I pull in Bloomington before school recommences.  This image is part of an ongoing series and the first two pieces went quite smoothly.  However, just when I thought it was smooth sailing, I ran into this ugly fellow.  The key layer started off pretty well...

but I couldn't leave well enough alone and kept futzing around until I over-worked the drawing.  Plus I slightly under-etched it in the processing stage, so the end result was definitely darker than I had initially intended.  While not so bad in itself, it took on a significantly different mood than the others in the series.  I also waged an ongoing battle with the dark areas filling in and had to modify my ink a couple of times and re-etch the stone half way through the edition.

The image on the left is filled in while the right image shows the correctly printed piece.

Oh well, printing always has a way of keeping me humble.  I think as the series progresses that this image will still has a place but it will sit at the further end of the dark spectrum.  Tomorrow I'll print its border and savor the process of graining this particular image off the stone.