Artist interview with Perth WA printmaker Hermann Isaac, taking you inside his studio to explore how he builds an etching from first drawing through, aquatint and sugar lift techniques, to final print, and why daily practice matters more than perfection.

Hermann shares how he plans compositions, reverses and resizes drawings for the plate, and then works through sugar lift, aquatint, inking and selective wiping to create rich blacks, subtle tones and those “little miracles” that appear through chemistry and chance. He breaks down key works like “Snake Head”, “The Opportunist” and his satirical national emblem etching, showing exactly how he combines control with accident to keep each print alive and surprising. From experimenting with turps, ink, aquatint and sugar lift to reworking plates for darker, more expressionist moods, Hermann’s studio practice is all about curiosity, close looking and staying open to what the materials want to do. He also talks about keeping prints affordable, using simple framing, and drawing constant inspiration from everyday life in Western Australia, pink galahs, dogs in guitar cases, and the changing world around us. If you’d like to learn directly from Hermann, keep an eye out for his upcoming online printmaking workshop on Proartika, where he’ll demonstrate these techniques step by step and guide you through developing your own etchings from first sketch to finished print.