The photograph below shows a small part of the plate while I was drawing it. The beach, water, and sky have not been started yet, and more work was done on the dock, the grass, and the mountains in the distance. The plate has a coating on the surface called Hydrocoat, which is intended for photographic exposure of images onto the plate. I was simply scratching through the coating into the solid copper plate to expose it for the etching process. The contrast between the copper and the coating made it very easy to draw the etching, even though in negative. The coating was also excellent to draw into: very thin so little effort was required, and non directional so the steel etching point could movely freely in all directions. The plate is particularly excellent for fine details or shading, where many thin lines can be drawn without the coating falling apart between the lines.

Detail of etching plate partially drawn.

Detail of trial proof after etching

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