_ETCHING._
In all the various methods of making illustrations to which I have so
far called your attention, it was necessary that some part of the work
should be done by a specially trained craftsman, at least if any
practical and commercial result was desired.
Now in etching, the more you yourselves do and the less any one else
does, the better should be the result.
An etching is, in its narrowest sense, a print from a metal plate into
which a design has been bitten or eaten by acid; again, in most of the
other methods, the printing was from relief blocks like type, and
therefore those illustrations could be printed with type. Now we have
to consider another sort of work, namely, intaglio, or incised, or
sunken work not printed from the surface, but from lines cut below it,
and therefore unavailable for letterpress printing. Of course it would
be easy to make a relief block in metal, or an incised block of wood,
to reverse the treatment in printing, but it would not be natural or
right.
The whole difference is this: if a wood block has a line cut in the
surface and the whole face is inked with a roller, the line will print
white and the rest of the block black. If the etching plate is inked
and cleaned off, as is always done, it will print white; if a line is
cut in it, the ink will remain in that and produce a black line. Of
course they must be printed in appropriate presses.
In its broadest sense an etching may be produced in any one of a
number of ways, by the artist, on a metal plate which may be printed
from.
It is never a process or mechanical engraving, and never was and never
will be, and the attempt to palm off mechanical blocks or plates is a
swindle and a humbug.
Etchings are produced in the following manner; at least this is the
best and simplest method.
A plate of highly polished copper, zinc, or even steel, iron, or
aluminium is obtained from the makers, William Longman, of Johnson's
Court, Fleet Street, or from Messrs. Hughes & Kimber, West Harding
Street, Fetter Lane, or Messrs. Roberson, 99, Long Acre. Copper,
however, is the best and almost universally used. This should be
carefully cleaned with a soft rag and whiting; then it should be
gripped by a vice with a wooden handle, in one corner, care being
taken to put a piece of soft paper between the vice and the plate to
keep the teeth of the former from scratching it; heated, either upon
an iron frame with a spirit or Bunsen lamp under it, or over the gas,
until, if you take a ball of etching ground and touch the plate with
it, the ground melts. This ground is made of resin, wax, and gum; the
best is made by Sellers in England and Cadart in France. All these
materials can be bought of Roberson or Hughes & Kimber. Touch the hot
plate in several places with the ground. It should melt at once; then
take an American etching roller (which I think you can only obtain at
Roberson's) and go over the plate rapidly with it in every direction,
until the little masses of melted ground have been spread evenly and
thinly in a film all over it. With a little practice you should be
able to do this in a couple of minutes, and you can lay in this way
(which is unknown virtually in England) a thinner, harder, more even
and very much better ground, with less trouble, than in any other.
Heat the plate again a little more, and take a bundle of wax tapers
twisted together by heating them, light them and pass them under the
face of the plate held, varnished side downwards, by the vice; do not
touch the plate with the taper, or the varnish, being still melted,
will come off, but go rapidly back and forward, allowing the flame
only to touch the surface. In a few minutes the varnish will have been
completely blackened by the smoke. Next, take a bottle of stopping-out
varnish (which you may as well buy; don't bother to make it) and cover
the back and edges of the plate. If this is done while the plate is
hot, it dries very fast, and as soon as the plate is cool it is ready
to work on.
This is the first stage. The waxy ground is put on to protect the
plate from the acid with which it is to be bitten, and it must be so
well made and well put on, that one can draw through it, without
tearing it up and without any resistance; also it must adhere firmly
to the plate, where it is not drawn through, and must resist the acid
perfectly in the untouched parts. The smoking is done to enable you to
see your lines in the copper, light on dark; this is rather curious at
first, but you will get used to it. The stopping-out varnish is also
to protect the plate, and is only a cheaper sort of ground dissolved
in oil of lavender or ether. When the plate is cool, it should be of a
brilliant uniform black, and if there are any dull, smoky-looking
places on it, the ground is burnt. Here the ground may be rubbed off,
or will show cracks, if you touch it, in these places, and the varnish
should be cleaned off the face with turpentine, the plate carefully
dried and regrounded. Otherwise the varnish will either crack while
you are drawing on it, or come off in the bath of acid, and your work
will be spoiled.
You draw upon the varnished plate with needles or points; any steel
points will do, from a knitting-needle to the best big point you can
get. The small needles invented by Mr. Whistler I find the best; but
this is a personal liking. They are of all shapes and sizes. You may
commence and draw in your entire subject, only remembering that you
must leave your foreground lines further apart than those in the
distance.
You may make your drawing either with the same needle, all over, or
with needles of different sizes; for though one half of the art is in
the drawing, the other half, and the really characteristic half, is in
the biting. There is very little to be said about the drawing, save
that you must draw just as well as ever you can; you will find out
almost immediately that you have the most responsive tool in your
fingers, and that you can work with it in any direction. Do not
bother, if you use the same needle, because the drawing looks flat,
and the lines are of the same width; the biting will fix all that.
Draw away; if you are afraid to tackle the copper straight away with a
point, paint your design on it, with a little Chinese white, or, if
you have a pencil drawing of the subject, you may make a tracing from
it, and go over that, transferring it to the plate; or you may turn
the drawing face down and run it through a copper plate press; the
drawing will come off on the varnished surface in reverse, and if you
are doing a portrait of a place you must otherwise reverse it
yourself. If you wish to sketch from nature in reverse, put up a
mirror on an easel, and turn your back to the subject, drawing from
the picture in the mirror, for, you must remember, that any subject
drawn, as you see it, on a copper plate, or even a wood-block, prints
in reverse.
Next, to bite or etch the drawing into the copper plate, take equal
parts of nitric acid and water and mix them in a glass-stoppered
bottle, some hours before you wish to use the mixture, for there is
enough heat produced by the chemical action to melt the ground if it
is used at once.
Or have a quantity of what is known as Dutch mordant made; this is
composed of--
Two parts Chlorate of Potash,
Ten parts Hydrochloric Acid,
Eighty-eight parts water.
Next, get an ordinary photographer's porcelain or rubber bath or tray;
lay the plate in it, pour the acid over it; in a few seconds bubbles
will arise, in all the lines; brush them away with a feather; leave
the plate, if there is any fine work on it, in the bath for only two
or three minutes, say for a light sky; take it out with rubber
finger-tips or a stick, for the acid will burn your fingers and a drop
will rot your clothes, staining them light yellow; wash the plate
thoroughly in clean water, dry it carefully with blotting-paper. Take
some of your stopping-out varnish, thin it with a little (a very
little) turpentine, paint over the very lightest parts of the drawing
with a camel's-hair brush dipped in the diluted varnish, and thus stop
them out--that is, stop them from biting any more by painting them
with the varnish. Wait till the places where you have painted the
varnish are thoroughly dry; then put the plate in the bath again and
bite the next stronger, nearer set of lines; of course, save where the
lines are covered by the stopping-out varnish, they will keep on
biting. Continue biting and stopping out till you get to the
foreground, where the lines should now be quite broad and deep; take
off the ground front and back by washing it with a rag dipped in
turpentine, dry it, and the plate is ready to print from.
Another method is to commence by drawing in the darks, biting them,
then drawing in the middle distance, the darks going on biting all the
while, and finally the extreme distance, when the whole plate will be
biting together; by this method no stopping out is necessary, but in
working out of doors it is awkward to carry baths and acid around with
one, otherwise one must run back to the studio, to bite between each
stage. But these two methods can be mixed up, and frequently are, and
you may also work in the bath, drawing lines through or over others,
thus getting richness while the biting is going on. The bad fumes
which are given off during the biting are not dangerous. In working
with the Dutch mordant, which bites slower than nitric acid and makes
no bubbles, but bites straight down, while nitric acid enlarges the
lines laterally, you will inhale much of the fumes, but they won't
hurt you. Although you do not see any action with the Dutch mordant,
brush the lines with a feather, else a deposit is formed and they will
bite unevenly.
It is very difficult to tell when a plate is well bitten, the biting
is very difficult, but on taking it out of the bath and holding it on
a level with your eye, you can see the bitten lines; you can also feel
the biting with a needle, and you may take off a bit of the varnish
with your thumb-nail or turpentine and look at the lines, re-covering
them again with the stopping-out varnish; but after this, of course,
they will not bite in that place.
Again, the lines do not bite evenly; where they are close together
they bite faster, and, after the plate has been in the acid some
time, it may change its speed of biting; differences of atmosphere and
temperature affect it even with the same acid on the same day; if the
nitric acid is too weak add more acid; if too strong pour in water,
and quick, else the ground will come off: it is too strong when it
boils and bubbles all over; it is too weak when there are no bubbles.
Dutch mordant eats always slowly, and never, so far as I know,
destroys the ground. At the last, for very strong darks, you may
sometimes use a little pure nitric acid, but it will most likely tear
up the ground, and if you leave it long enough will spoil all your
lines, giving you only a great black hole. These are the systems
employed by all etchers; the lengthy dissertations about white ground,
silver ground, positive and negative processes, need not concern you,
they are never practised, and mostly unknown to the best men. These
simple directions should enable you to produce artistic plates, if you
have the necessary ability. Still, when you have had a proof of your
plate pulled--I will talk of printing in the next lecture--you will
find that there are all sorts of imperfections in it, possibly holes,
places where it is not bitten enough or too much bitten, or that it is
too dark or too light all over; it is but seldom that a plate is right
when the first proof is pulled. If you find a hole bitten in it, take
a burnishing tool, flatten the hole down as much as possible, find the
place on the back with a pair of calipers, hammer it up from the back,
placing it on an anvil, burnish it again and polish the surface with
charcoal, oil, and rags; revarnish the place, redraw, and rebite it.
If it is only a small place you may take up some nitric acid on a
feather, and paint the little spot to be rebitten with that. A few
drops of the acid have nearly as much power as a great deal. In fact
you may paint the face of your plate with acid and do your biting in
that way, without ever immersing it in the bath at all. If it is too
much bitten it must be rubbed down with charcoal and oil, a tedious
process. If it is too light it must be rebitten all over; then take a
rebiting roller, putting some liquid etching ground on a separate
plate, take the ground up on the roller and roll the face of the plate
very carefully; the ground should cover the face without going into
any of the lines; heat it very slightly to dry the ground, leave it
for a day or so and then bite as before. If there are places where
lines want joining or little touches of dark would be effective, put
them in with a graver or a point.
You may use a graver altogether, and produce a line engraving; or a
point, either steel or diamond, and make what is known as a dry-point
etching, that is, merely a scratched drawing on the copper; the point
throws up, as you draw with it, a furrow, which is greater or less as
you incline the point, and this holds the ink, and is called burr, and
gives for a few proofs great richness; a steel face can, however, be
put on the copper plate, and any number of pulls may be taken. The
difference between the cutting of lines with a graver and the drawing
of them with a point is this: the graver, both in metal and wood, is
pushed from one; the point in etching, and even the knives in wood
cutting, are drawn toward one.
Messrs. Roberson have invented a plate of celluloid which, for dry
point work, seems to be fairly good, and as this plate is white or
cream-coloured, as one draws on it the lines may be filled up with
paint, and one may thus see the drawing as one works. Of course, the
same thing may be done with dry point on copper. The great advantage
of the celluloid is its lightness. It must not, however, be heated in
printing, otherwise it will be ruined. Many etchers are now making
experiments with aluminium, but no certain results have as yet been
obtained.
There are many other forms of engraving included under the title of
Etching, although, properly speaking, they have nothing to do with it.
Aquatint: a ground, made by depositing powdered resin in solution with
spirits of wine, is poured on the plate, slightly heated, and as it
dries the resin adheres to the plate and cracks up irregularly; a
drawing may be made on this, and stopped out in the usual way. Or
powdered resin may be sprinkled on the plate, heated, when it will
adhere, or the plate may be placed in a box containing resin in very
fine powder, heated, and the box shaken; the resin will settle on it
and produce the ground.
A very similar ground may be made by passing the ordinarily-grounded
plate through a copper-plate printing-press, with a piece of sandpaper
over it, three or four times, then the design may be painted on it in
stopping-out varnish, and at times a very good result may be obtained.
Lines may be put in, etched before the ground is laid; but personally
I don't like the lines at all; without them the result is rather like
a bitten painting. Silk and canvas can also be placed on the grounded
plate, which is then run through the press, to get tints in the
ground.
Tints may be obtained after the plate is bitten by painting it with
olive oil and sprinkling flowers of sulphur on it, which gives a very
charming tint, but it does not last long; I believe that if acid is
poured over it, it may last better. Mr. Frank Short says so, but I
have never tried the experiment.
Soft ground etchings are made by mixing etching ground and tallow
together in equal proportions, covering the plate with this
composition by means of the roller: that is, put some of the
composition on a clean plate, pass the roller over it till it is
covered with the soft ground, and then roll it on to the plate on
which you propose to work, smoke it and then stretch a piece of
rough-grained or lined drawing paper over the face, as paper is
stretched for making water-colours, draw upon this with a lead pencil
and then carefully take the paper off; you must not rest on or touch
the plate with your fingers; the ground comes away with the paper
where the pencil has passed, and the design is seen on the copper,
and is then to be bitten in as in ordinary etching.
Mezzotint is also included, for some unknown reason, with etching. The
face of the plate is roughened in every direction by going over it
with a toothed instrument called a rocker, until it will print
perfectly black; the design is then traced on it; the drawing is made
by scraping down the lights, and finally by burnishing the whites
quite smooth.
Tint effects can also be obtained by a smooth-toothed wheel, the
roulette, the same as that used by process engravers; only here it
produces blacks, while they use it to get lights.
Monotypes, that is paintings made in colour or black and white on a
bare copper plate in the usual way, though they must be handled
thinly, may be passed through the press, and they will yield one
exquisitely soft and delicate impression. The electrotyping and
duplicating of them changes their character and value entirely: it is
a ridiculous and inartistic proceeding.
But after going through all this list,--I have barely referred to
steel engraving in line, which, as I have said, is only working with
an ordinary graver in steel, and is slow and tedious, unsatisfactory
drudgery; or to stipple engraving, dotting and biting in dots, instead
of lines, as practised by Bartolozzi,--one comes back to the simple
method I described at first, the method with some improvements of
Rembrandt, the method of Whistler, or in dry point the method of
Helleu; and what is good enough for those masters should be good
enough for you.