Soft Ground dabblings

As my etching plate sits in the acid... the edges slowly corroding away for the next couple days to get them to that perfect state of imperfection... I decided that I need another project to keep me trucking along in the in term. I had my drawing already made up and decided that I would dabble with soft ground etching. 

Basically this is a similar process to hard-ground (which I've been using) except the layer of ground is much thinner when applied and it remains tacky while on the plate.  

My teacher suggested this method to me and I took it on without really knowing quite what I was getting in to,... but that's also the fun part!

What I've had to do thus far is coat the plate, trace my drawing (outlines only - on tissue paper), and now I'm very gingerly transferring the drawing onto the plate making sure not to contact any part of the plate with pressure from my hand or foreign objects. In this step I draw directly onto the traced out image and do all the delicate pencil shading. In the end I should have a final image on the plate which will then be etched with acid.

Here's the set up... original on the left, tracing and plate on the right, mirror used to see the image in proper orientation for the shading.