Mersc Fine Art

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ENGRAVING

In engraving, the plate is cut into and the ink lies inside the grooves. The various 'species' of engraving relevant here include etching, photogravure, line and mezzotint. Engravings were often made from a combination of several of these techniques; these are known as mixed method engravings. The plates are usually made of copper, which is soft and easily worked. When the engraver was finished with his work, the plate was often coated with a hard alloy by electrolysis to make it last longer. However, some engravings were made straight onto steel plates, and some smaller ones for illustrated publications were made onto wood.

Engraving

Etching

Line Engraving

Mezzotint

Photogravure

ETCHING

A method of engraving. Etching depends on acid to engrave the plate. A coating of resin is laid onto the plate and a line pushed with a steel point through the coating to expose the metal. When the image has thus been drawn, the plate is engraved by immersion in acid. Protected by the resin, only the exposed metal of the drawing is etched. Etching is very fine, and in the hands of a master such as Jasinski, the technique could produce the most delicate effects. It was often applied before other techniques in mixed method engravings.

soft ground etching

Dry point

Aquatint

Lithograph

LINE ENGRAVING

A method of engraving. Line engravings are made by working directly onto the plate with a burin, a small v-shaped chisel. The harder the tool is applied the deeper it cuts, the more ink the groove holds, and the heavier it prints. Line engraving can produce very clean and draughtsman-like engravings.

MEZZOTINT

A method of engraving. The subtlest technique of engraving to produce tone is mezzotint. It is virtually the only technique whereby the engraver may work from dark to light instead of from light to dark. Mezzotints are made by completely or partially covering the plate with thousands of very fine dents, applied with a steel tool called a rocker. If a plate which has been completely rocked is printed from a deep blackness is all that can be seen. It is a particularly rich black because extra ink lies in the burr thrown up by the rocker as it dents the soft metal. An image is then created by scraping out the dents completely for white, and burnishing down the burr for tone. Very fine graduations of tone can be obtained by rubbing with a soft cloth. Mezzotint can produce rich and soft engravings of great subtlety.

PHOTOGRAVURE

A method of engraving. This method, as with etching, depends on acid to engrave the plate. In photogravure, the same basic technique was employed photographically. Instead of resin, a light sensitive gelatine coated the plate. A photograph was taken of a painting, and light was shone through the negative to expose the gelatine on the plate. Where the light reached the gelatine, it hardened. The soft remaining gelatine was then washed off the plate, leaving the light-exposed hard areas still protecting the plate. The plate was then etched with acid and an image of the painting was printed from it. Photogravures varied enormously in quality, as during the exposure of the plate a net screen was used to break up the light into dots, and this was a very difficult process. The best photogravures were made in Germany.

A soft ground etching stats off as a similar process to a normal etching, in that a sheet of copper is covered in wax. The key difference is that the wax is now mixed with tallow before being rubbed into the plate. This has the effect of preventing the wax from hardening properly, keeping it slightly tacky. A sheet of paper is laid over the waxed plate and then the artist draws the image through the paper with a pencil or similar point. When the paper is lifted, the wax under the drawn line sticks to the paper, exposing the copper. This leaves a fragmented line as the wax does not come up in one piece. The artist can vary the width of line dependent on the width of the point he uses. All the other facets of the etching, for depth and intensity of light and darkness still apply. However the artist has considerably more freedom to sketch the image with greater flexibility and subtlety. Using the soft ground etching process creates the impression of a pencil drawing when the image is printed.

 

DRYPOINT

Yet another method of producing a fine print in black and white is by a very simple and direct process called drypoint. Quite similar to engraving, again the copper plate is employed, but instead of the angle-shaped tool a simple needle is used to scratch the design on the plate. This raises a burr on each side of the line which can be left or accentuated at the will of the artist.

The method of printing is similar to that of an etching and when the plate is inked the rough sides of the burr, as is obvious, will retain the ink more readily than the simple strokes and thus a very rich quality can be obtained from the drypoint line. However, this burr wears very easily, and in fact a variation will be found in almost every proof pulled from the plate. This makes for a greatly added interest to the collector, and explains why certain proofs by our 20th Century artists are so much more prized than ohers. The beautiful rich tones, the strength and character created by the delicate richness of this medium, are the result of the directness of conception and draughtsman­ship of the artist. A far distance told by the slightest line down to a deep velvety rich foreground shadow are the range at command, and the spirit of " drawing " is felt more than in any other of the printed mediums.

 

AQUATINT

 

This is a process of etching for the obtaining of flat, evenly shaded areas which may be light or dark, depending upon a more or less porous ground and the length of time of biting. The plate is covered with the porous ground and, if there are any places where it is not desired to have it bitten, these places are covered with a brush and stopping out varnish, the plate is then placed in the bath after having the back and edges protected with varnish, just as is an ordinary etching, and bitten for the lightest shade desired. It is then removed and after the lightest parts are stopped out with the varnish the next deeper parts are bitten, etc., until all are finished.

There are many ways of preparing the ground. One is to 'sprinkle or dust rosin particles on it through use of a flour sieve or a dusting box. After this has been done as evenly as possible, the plate is heated so that they adhere to it, forming many oddly shaped little dots. Another is to make a solution or various solutions from very light to fairly heavy of rosin dissolved in rectified alcohol. When these solutions are poured over the plate and allowed to dry they will be found to produce a granulated surface. This may be bitten as above or it may be further manipulated with stronger or weaker solutions before biting.

Some artists prefer to coat the plate with ordinary etching ground and then place fine sand paper on it face down and run it through the press. Others sprinkle a thinly applied ground with sand and then warm the plate sufficiently to melt the ground and have the sand into it. But the process is in general always the same, the artist proceeding from the lightest tones to the deepest very much .it is done in the making of batiks. It is very difficult to obtain a soft edge to an area of a given shade and graduated shading is propor­tionately exacting. Many artists contend that it should not be attempted, but when one examines the beauty of shading in one of the prints by Nat Long, one cannot but admit that the results are worth the trouble. Combined with etching or soft ground etching, aquatint is capable of producing interesting effects.

It is thought that the process was first used sometime around 1660. It came into popular favour about the end of the 18th century, fell into disuse after the middle of the 19th century and was revived successfully by such artists as Sir Frank Short, Theodore Roussel, Oliver Hall, W. Lee Hankey, NV. P. Robins, and others.

An aquatint plate lends itself to printing in colour in the same manner as mezzotint, and although practised in the 18th century in England by the engravers of sporting pictures it has only recently (1940's) been revived by Nat Long, Ward Binks and Winifred Austin

LITHOGRAPH

To make a Victorian lithograph, an image was drawn on a piece of flat stone through a previously applied waxy coating. Water-based ink lay only on the stone where the coating had been removed by the drawing, being elsewhere repelled by the wax, and so the image was transferred to the paper.