Inside the acid baths and aquatint plates of Chien Yu Lin’s diaristic prints

Chien Yu Lin matured in Taipei, where she trained in standard Japanese and Chinese ink painting. It was just after she relocated to Vienna to continue her research studies that she experienced aquatint etching, a printmaking method constructed on layers of acid, varnish and copper. “In the meantime, drawing has become an important way of forming my thoughts,” she states.

Every print starts in the very same way. “I usually start with free, intuitive drawing with ink and brushes, which almost feel a bit like writing a diary,” Lin states. In her portfolio you’ll see a variety of questionable figures with expressions that rupture through the frame, the sort of markings that can just be made when the artist really sets their mind to the procedure– a sort of cinematic picture from a short-lived conference or idea.

In Diary 2, you’ll see individuals looking a little saucy, surrounded by scratchy lines and what appears like 2 watery-blue hats collaborated above them. In abrupt rain, a character looks peeved, however likewise solemn, as tears diminish their face– the face liquifying into a field of silver dots versus a plain background. They’re freeze-frames that might not have actually been put ahead of time. “Daily life and imagination – dreams, a word or an adjective from the literature I’m currently reading, my diary which consists of many unfinished thoughts and memories where those fleeting moments pass by.”

Just as soon as she has a body of these illustrations does Lin pick which ones to become a print series– and it’s here that the work turns from gut impulse into exact engineering. To assist us comprehend, she lays her approach out in 15 unique actions. She traces the illustration onto tracing paper, then polishes the copper plate with sandpaper and roughens its 4 edges. Varnish goes on both sides of the plate before the illustration is moved throughout and the lines are cut in with a needle. The plate then enters into an acid bath of ferric chloride for 20 to 25 minutes to engrave the lines, after which Lin cleans off the acid, strips the varnish from the front, and degreases the surface area with ethanol and soy sauce to prepare it for aquatint.

And after that, the tonal work starts. Rosin powder is sprayed throughout the plate and merged to the surface area with a heat weapon; varnish is painted onto any location Lin wishes to safeguard from more biting; and the plate returns into the acid. “To achieve different shapes and intensities, you can repeat steps 11 and 12 multiple times,” she describes– each pass darkening some locations while holding others back, developing the tonal variety you see in a piece like Sudden Rain. When the varnish and rosin are totally gotten rid of and the plate is degreased once again, she moves onto proofing. “I start testing the colours and make multiple test prints. Once the decision is made, I start printing the edition.”

Lin’s more recent work marks a shift because decision-making. “I’ve been experimenting with more saturated and vivid colour tones using multiple plates, which is a shift from my past work,” she states. More plates imply more colour mixes layered on top of one another. “I have also started to incorporate more spatial structure and room into my compositions, such as Indoor and In the Car.”

When asked how she desires her work to be checked out, Lin has actually currently made a note of her response, and she has it prepared at hand: “It is through printmaking that the subtle, silent and indescribable moments of everyday life are gently captured. Those moments are magical and dazzlingly iridescent, much like the chapters of a fictional novel,” she states.

“If these works could be described in an abstract sense of time, I hope it would be an afternoon in a day – a time where the sun is veiled by thin clouds, shimmering in silvery grey, like an interlude of the world, as if the world is taking a breath, preparing for the next brief and scattered rain.”