Element Art: Print & Matt

My element is Mercury, which is element 80. It has a mass of 200.59. Mercury is the only metallic element that is a liquid at room temperature. It is used in fluorescent lighting, thermometers, and certain types of medication. In Ancient Rome, it was used in cosmetics. This is unfortunate, as it is highly toxic. When choosing what images to incorporate into my print, the first thing I noticed about Mercury was its reflective, silvery surface. The imagery I used ended up being a hand with mercury dripping onto it from a broken thermometer. The process of making this print involved sketching out a plan, redrawing my final design, transferring the design to tracing paper, etching it onto a styrofoam sheet, and using the styrofoam sheet as the plate to print off of after using the brayer to coat it in ink. If I had to do the print again, I would have put in less detail. This would have made it turn out a lot neater. What I particularly enjoyed about this project was that it involved chemistry and art, which are my favorite subjects. It was interesting to be working on the same thing in two classes, as well. Perhaps this helped to reinforce the lesson.