Twice Bitten

I took some advice from the Wet Canvas Forum to re-ground and re-bite the plate. Here is the 2nd proof of the re-bitten plate. For the most part I did not re-needle the original lines and concentrated on those areas that had not bitten at all the first time around. As I suppose was inevitable, the original lines and the newly bitten lines did not match exactly though I tried to stop out and time the biting so they would be as close as possible. The newly bitten lines ended up a bit darker so on the second proof I wiped those areas more to remove more ink. That worked pretty well as you may (or may not) agree, and if I spend more time I can probably get the match even closer. Comments would be very welcome.

Take Me Down To The River

As I’ve mentioned before, I live about a half mile from the Delaware River in west-central New Jersey. Several weeks ago I drove a few miles north to one of the few bridges across the river at Riegelsville, Pennsylvania. The bridge was built by Roebling & Sons of New Jersey in 1904, the same firm that built the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s a beautiful suspension bridge, one of a handful of continuous wire-rope suspension bridges in the country. For all that, it’s a small, country-sized bridge that replaced the original covered bridge built there in the 1830’s though it uses the original stone supports. I drive across this bridge every day as I go to and from work in Easton, Pa.

Anyway, it was one of the local sites I wanted to capture in an etching and I decided this was a good weekend to make the plate and pull a proof or two. I still have a lot to learn about drawing, etching and printmaking and I took a few more small steps forward through working on this project.

I would very much appreciate hearing them people's opinions about problems. In my opinion the image is too light. I don't think this was because of the biting but with the needling or, to go back even further, with the grounding. I used a standard liquid hard ground but since I had problems with a previous plate where the acid leeched through a bit I decided to put two coats on this time. That may still have worked out but I didn’t account for that extra thickness when I needled the plate and I did clear the lines properly. They looked OK up to a point, and my lack of experience told me they were OK, but in reality they still had some measure of the ground left on them. This resulted in some lines not coming out at all and others that were very light or incomplete.

I don’t necessarily think that proved to be a complete disaster, but there are some elements that I wish were not so spotty and the lines I needled for the water are pretty much nonexistent. Again, I would appreciate opinions on this. I was not going for an architectural copy of the bridge but an impressionistic interpretation having drawn it from nature. I do think I will add some dry point to give some appearance to the water.

On the other hand, this is my first real drawing from nature turned into an etched plate and a print. So whatever its faults, I’m excited and pleased.

Here are the facts: Bridge over the Delaware River at Riegelsville, Penna.; 3” x 4” copper plate etching from nature; Graphic Chemical’s bone black etching ink on their generic cotton house paper.

Finis Origine Pendet

Bertha C. Jacques co-founded the Chicago Society of Etchers in 1910 and helped launch a revival of American fine art printmaking that included hundreds of female artists. Many printmaking programs and art societies sprang up as a result.

I like the photo above. The young woman is obviously determined to produce a print. Not only is she exerting herself physically but she has made the effort to establish at least a rudimentary studio space in the corner of her room. From the style of her hair and dress I'm guessing the photo dates from the 1920's or 30's. If the latter she is perhaps one of the many women and men taking advantage of the New Deal's WPA art programs, many of which were home-grown operations. The room and furnishings seem to confirm a humble situation in life as much as her clothing and lack of high style. In spite of these things, or perhaps because of them, she is pursuing something beyond the drudgery of day to day existence in order to speak in way available only to those who try.

It's All Greek To Me

I was 28 when I went to college. Part of the course of study was 2 ½ years of koine Greek, the ancient common Greek that was the language of trade and commerce throughout the Mediterranean at the time of the birth of Christ. The memorization of words to establish a working vocabulary began immediately as did basic grammar: Auto, Autos, Auton. -ei, -eis, -ein. You get the idea; much fun ensued. At some point in my elementary school education I had been taught English grammar: noun, verb, adjective, etc. English is a fortunate language, not having declension tables to worry about. In any case, having been duly educated as a young man I promptly forgot most of what I had been taught about English grammar and now at college, 10 years out of high school, found that to deal with the grammar and thereby learn this ancient and quite dead language I would need to relearn English grammar.

I mention the above because I’ve discovered in my exploration of etching that I have a similar failing. The cure for this failing is the same as it was then: get back to basics. This translates into a need to learn how to draw. Of course, I had some notion of the need to draw at the time I was first contemplating printmaking at all. I’ve never considered myself an artist and certainly have not felt I’ve had any particular skill or natural ability at drawing, painting, or creating images in general. I took whatever art classes in school were required, I think it was one in high school, and focused on other things. That has always meant some kind of craftwork and is why I’m a cabinetmaker today.

So when I first considered getting involved with printmaking, and copper plate etching in particular, I thought about how my lack of either training or special ability to draw would affect what I would be able to do. I decided I could probably do some simple basic work but for the most part confine myself to more abstract images and especially soft ground work in which objects are pressed into the ground to create the image. But as part of my self-taught education as an etcher that has involved reading about the etchers and methods of the past, especially those etchers of the Etching Revival of the 19^th and early 20^th century, I’ve discovered in myself a real thirst to express myself as an etcher that will require more than stick figures or tracing.

I’m therefore teaching myself how to draw. I’ve picked up several standard works and have my dad’s old drafting leads and lead holders. I’ve made two short drives in the last couple weeks to practice recording local subjects. I live on the Delaware River and there are an unlimited number of interesting and beautiful subjects to choose from. So far I’ve confirmed that I don’t have any particularly great natural skill. But in this short time I’ve found that I’m not completely bereft of any ability. I’ve seen enough in my work to give me confidence that if I continue to learn and practice I will be able to at least satisfy my own desires to communicate through drawing and thus through etching. I’ll be making etchings as I go since I am still learning there as well. But it will be déjà vu all over again as I learn etching at the same time as I learn its prerequisite drawing, the same as I once learned to understand Greek grammar at the same time I learned its prerequisite English.

Now I have to go as a sudden urge for souvlaki has overtaken me.

A Nod To Melvil Dewey

I decided to copy my posts dealing with etching and printmaking from my letterpress blog to this new one. I did this partly to prime the pump and partly because blogs are useful archives of information. One of my hopes in maintaining a blog is that people might learn from my trials and tribulations as I have learned so much from others. Having the opportunity to go back in some cases through several years of blog posts I've researched has been invaluable. My attempt at accurately labeling each post will have to substitute for the more elaborate system of cataloging that might have pleased Mr. Dewey.

The Haunting

_________________________

Blood of bat and bone of cat,

Tongue of frog and tooth of rat,

Hog’s hair, claw of bear,

Three times three, now follow me…

Ghosts sometimes appear when least expected and at the most inopportune times. This can present problems for those of us who steadfastly deny their existence. But there are times, especially when practicing the ancient craft of printing, that we must at least partially confess the truth that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.

I made my second etched plate last weekend, soft ground on a 3” x 4” copper plate. This was done the same as with the pine branch, laying some twine on the grounded plate and running it through the press. As it turned out, I made a mistake when doing this that I’ll detail below. I let it bite for about 25 minutes, a time that was based mostly on my experience with the pine branch and also on the line etching I did as my first experiment. I think I judged it better this time, though I’m happy with the pine branch as well.

To pull the proof I again used Graphic Chemical's Bone Black ink. And except for the final, and I think the best proof, their 150 lb. cotton rag house paper. For that proof I used my trusty unknown 20 lb. laid paper.

The first two proofs are shown above. Note that the one on the left was final wiped with newspaper and the one on the right was hand-wiped. After the first proof I noticed the ghost image circled above and thought it was something I had done during the wipe. But it appeared again on the second proof so I moved the plate slightly on the bed and got the result on the third proof seen above on the right: the same ghost in a different place. Those pesky spirits! I thought about this for a while and before organizing a séance I examined my felts carefully and found a matching depression in the catcher and cushion and then also in the woven pusher on the cylinder. This ghost hadn’t appeared in any other proofs I had pulled previously and it pretty much matches the size of the coil in the noose. And I did in fact run the plate through the press at right angles to the direction I pulled the proofs, which explains the orientation. So my conclusion is that I should have used more padding and less pressure when running the grounded plate through the press. Another lesson learned.

Here is the last proof I pulled which also received a final hand wipe. I’m rather pleased with it and call it Too Much Rope.

P.S. My thanks to Barbee Oliver Carleton for the poem from her children’s story The Wonderful Cat of Cobbie Bean that I first read as a boy in the book, The Arrow Book Of Ghost Stories, that I bought for 15 cents through the Scholastic Book Services at school in the 1960’s. Do they even still have books in school?

Well Grounded

Intaglio fun continues. Last weekend I experimented with soft ground. This is like hard ground except it has a greasy substance added such as tallow, Vaseline, or even grease. While it does dry, it stays soft and a bit sticky. Hard ground is usually removed with an etching needle and creates well defined and clean lines. If on the other hand you press something into the soft ground (paper, leaf, fabric, etc.) by running it through the press the soft ground will stick to it. When the article is removed it will have pressed through the soft ground to the plate in varying degrees depending on the texture of the article and that texture will expose parts of the plate in its likeness.

Soft ground was perhaps most common in the latter half of the 18th century and first half of the 19th. Traditionally it was used with paper and pencil. A piece of paper is laid over the soft-grounded plate and the drawing made directly onto the paper. The lines produced after etching are soft-edged, like charcoal or crayon. I was really intrigued by the idea of making a plate of an object such as a leaf or feather. I've seen work like this and it reminds me of fossils. It's somewhat haunting, somewhat surreal, impressionistic and moody. I like it.

I went outside and picked a few end branches off the Evergreen tree next to the house. I then had to experiment for quite a while to get the combination of pressure, wax and blotting paper, and blankets to work. I also had to trim the needles off to get a basically two-dimensional flat object that would lay flat and not overwhelm the image by being too dense. This required certain artistic decisions as to how much was too much and where exactly to remove and where to leave alone. Even so, the first several trials on brass key tags produced squashed pine needles, torn waxed paper, pine-juice scented blotting paper, and no need for air freshener. But finally I got it and ran a prepared 16 gauge 2" x 4" copper plate through the press. This was another piece of the old letterpress half-tone I was given. I had to fleck off a few errant pieces of pine needles but it looked pretty good.

I laid the plate in the mordant and a new guessing game ensued: how long to leave it in. This was even more difficult to judge than the line drawing I did on the hard grounded plate the week before. In that case at least all the lines were going to be etched to the same depth. Here they would vary because of the nature of the texture to be reproduced. In the end I left it there for about 20 minutes, checking twice during that time. For the most part I think I got it right. At least I was personally happy with it for my first time.


It was then on to pulling a few proofs and as you can see from the photos I tried it with two kinds of paper. The first type of paper was my old standby unknown brand, approx. 20 lb. laid paper. Since it's the only etching ink I have I used Graphic Chemical Bone Black. I did the final wipe with my hand. I apologize for the poor scans which show strange horizontal lines and make it look like the plate mark is smashed, etc. Once I get a decent digital camera I'll take nice photos instead.


The second proof was done on Graphic Chemical's 150 lb. cotton rag house paper, a few sheets of which I purchased to try out. Again, I used the Bone Black ink. I did the final wipe with old newspaper to get a cleaner background. That rotten scan again! There are no horizontal lines on the actual proof.

I'm not sure whether I like the hand wipe or the paper wipe better; each has its merits I suppose. I'm certain to do a lot of experimenting and of course I'm hoping my technique will improve which will have its own affect. I admit to being very pleased with the way the plate turned out, also somewhat astonished. At some point I will print an "edition" but for now I'm still learning and experimenting.