Black and white and everything in between

I'm really sorry for playing possum for such a long while. I've been up to a lot (again - life has a tendency to get in the way, hasn't it?). Like, starting to play roller derby (now that's some huge euphemism - but more on that in a later post, possibly in form of a comic). Or learning how to develop my own negatives and make prints (b/w). I love it (and the chemistry geek in me does so even more)! Here is my very first "handmade" photo:

It kinda feels like a terrible blasphemy to upload a scan of an analog, manually developed photo on my blog...

There are definitely some "errors" and things I'd have done differently that I see now, but on the whole I really like it. This is, by the way, the beautiful owner of a neat little Berlin based shop called Lashopp (she's still working on her online shop I believe, but there's also some stuff on her dawanda, if you're interested).

Also, my beloved favorite sister sweetheart sent me a real ...err... Japanese ink stone (?? what is the correct name of that stuff?). Here's my first attempt of using it (you may recognize the subject ;) This quick sketch was done earlier already from the first tiny contact print):

I can't seem to get a really dark black from it though. Not sure if I'm even supposed to. Anyone got some experience with this kind of ink?