Part 6

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.

LECTURE IX.

_THE PRINTING OF ETCHINGS._

Which is the more interesting and amusing--the drawing, biting, or printing of an etching has never been decided. But no artist is willing, if he can help it, to allow any one else, once he has mastered the method of work, to perform any part of the operation for him.

The printing of an etching is, in theory, very simple; in practice, it is most difficult, but most delightful.

The plate being bitten, as I have described in a previous lecture, must now be printed, for the prints from it, and not the plate itself, are the end of etching--really of all illustration.

You will have to spend several pounds on an etching outfit, so you had better get a good one. The small ones, including press, ink, chemicals, quite complete, sold by Roberson, of 99, Long Acre, are most excellent as far as they go, for small plates, and taking round the country with one on a sketching tour; but for serious work, a more practical set of tools is necessary. Therefore I would advise you first to take lessons of a good etcher, who will allow you to work with him, or to go to a printer and get him to show you how the work is done.

This is the method: the first thing to do is to obtain some good handmade paper, almost all old paper is excellent; it should be unruled, of course; often the tone of it is lovely, and it may contain most beautiful water-marks. I am referring to Dutch, French, English, or German papers of at least a century old. At times you may be able to pick up old ledgers, account-books, or packages of unprinted paper; treasure them up; if you don't print etchings on them, there is nothing more delightful to draw upon. There are also Japanese and India papers, which give most beautiful delicate translucent effect to prints. Vellum, parchment, and even silk or satin may be printed on. But as a general rule the old handmade Dutch paper is the most satisfactory, if you can get it. For ordinary work and experiments, modern paper is quite good enough, and very good handmade paper can be obtained from Roberson's. Let us suppose you are going to print; twenty-four hours before, take several sheets of paper, rather more than you want, in case of failure or for any other reason; cut the sheets the size you desire them, a little larger than the plate, so as to leave a decent margin. Cut the paper first; Japanese paper, for example, cannot easily be cut when it is wet. Get a sheet of window glass, lay it flat on a table, take the first sheet of paper and damp it on one side by passing a wet sponge over it, lay it on the glass; on top of this sheet lay another dry one; damp the top of that with the sponge; and continue laying down sheets and damping their upper faces till you have enough; put another sheet of window glass on the top, and a heavy weight upon it; in a day the whole mass should be completely dampened all through. I believe the same thing can be done by a copying press and book, and I have heard it is so done by lithographers, but the way I have described is the usual one that is followed by plate printers. The next thing is the press. A good secondhand one may be bought at Hughes & Kimber's, West Harding Street, Fetter Lane, for about five pounds. Much depends, however, on the size and finish. You should have it brought to your studio, set up and adjusted for you by skilled workmen. Then you must buy a heater and a jigger for your plates, ink, oil, canvas, and a number of other things, dabbers, a muller, an ink-slab, and a big palette knife; all these will run up a bill of ten pounds or so.

But having your press and other things, let us go to work: light the gas-burners under the heater which you have bought; if too much flame comes out and makes the iron top too hot, plug up some of the jets. Put your plate on the top of the heater. First, however, see that your press is adjusted, so that the plate will fit in. To do this, put a piece of paper on the top of the plate and run it in the press to try it, and see if it goes under the roller without tearing the paper. Take some of the ink out of the can, or better, get it in powder, put it on the ink-slab and mix it with oil with the palette knife; then take the muller and grind the ink until it is thoroughly ground and mixed and of about the thickness of paint as it comes out of the tube. But each plate will require more or less oil or colour, and some brown, red, or possibly blue mixed with it to take off the crude raw look which pure black often has in the print. The plate being now warm, not so hot as to boil or burn the ink, dab with a dabber the ink from the slab all over the face of the plate (it is warmed to wipe the ink off easily), slide it from the heater to the wooden box called a jigger, which must be placed alongside the former. You should get a printer to arrange your things for you. Take a piece of the rag or canvas for wiping, double it carefully and loosely in your hand--this requires much practice--and remove all the ink which is on the surface of the plate. Even after you have wiped it some time, an oily film will remain, which, unless you polish the plate with whiting rubbed on your hand, you cannot remove, and you do not want to, because the oil gives a delicious tone to the print. Some ink may be left in places on the surface to increase and strengthen the work, but what you must learn to do is not to wipe any of the ink out of the bitten lines. This is very difficult, and if you do wipe it out, you must commence all over again, only the chances are that you will know nothing about this until the plate is printed. The colour may also be increased by going over the surface of the plate, having again warmed it, if it has become cool, with a bit of soft taffatas silk with a trembling muscular motion of the arm and fingers. This action, called retroussage, which must be seen to be understood, drags the ink slightly over the surface of the plate without taking much out of the lines.

Now take off the weights from your paper, take up a sheet, which should be thoroughly damped, first brushing it with a soft brush to remove any drops of water or dirt or dust. The paper should be placed near the press. Put the plate face upwards on the press, on which the blankets have been properly arranged--you must see this done for yourselves--the plate underneath of course; lay the sheet of damp paper on the face of the plate and run it through the press once; it is well to put a sheet of ordinary thick paper on the top of the damp sheet, otherwise the latter will stick to the blankets; raise the blankets and take up the first sheet of paper, the print will most likely adhere to that, if it does not, take it up carefully by one edge, it will come away from the copper, and you will find the print on the under side of it.

Japanese and India prints require very careful handling, especially the latter. They are usually printed on to a sheet of plate paper by dusting it, or the back of the India paper, with flour; this, on passing through the press, is made into paste by the dampness of the India paper, and they are thus moulded together.

As soon as the prints are taken off the press, put them between sheets of blotting paper and allow them to dry for some time, they will come out flat; if you neglect this, they will crinkle up very badly, and are difficult to get smooth again.

This is the way a copper plate is printed, but you must see it done and practise for a long time before you can do it decently.

Colour prints from copper plates may be made in one or more ways. The various colours may be put on by applying them where they are wanted with stumps, or the plate may be painted by applying the colours with brushes. Several plates may be used, just as in lithography or coloured block printing, and these coloured plates wiped as I have been describing. Many prints, however, are coloured by hand after they are printed.

Mezzotints, acquatints, steel engravings, &c., are printed in the same way as copper-plates. The rubbing with the canvas and the hand, and the tremendous pressure to which the plates are subjected, quickly spoil the clearness and sharpness of the lines; therefore if any large number of prints are wanted, a coating of steel is put on the face of the copper-plate by steel-plating it; this protects the copper, and as soon as the steel facing shows signs of wear it may be removed, and a new film of steel applied; hence an unlimited edition can be printed in time from a copper plate. If it is necessary that the printing should be done more rapidly, electrotypes can be made from the original copper-plate (_see_ electrotype and stereotype Lecture), and several printers can then work on these electrotypes at the same time. The electrotypes are rarely equal to the originals.

Such is a brief outline of the method of printing copper plates; but I cannot too strongly impress upon you the fact that it is a handicraft which, though most interesting, requires long apprenticeship, with a master printer, and in one's studio, before good results can be obtained.

LECTURE X.

_PHOTOGRAVURE AND PHOTO-LITHOGRAPHY, ETC._

These processes or methods of reproduction are the outcome of the endeavour to supersede the artist and engraver. They are quite mechanical, or should be; in fact the less evidence there is of any intervention on the part of the operator or maker of a photographic plate, the better it will be for the work which is being reproduced; still, if an artist turns his attention to these processes, the finest results are obtained, even though he must completely efface himself in the work. M. Amand Durand made the best photogravures ever produced because he was an artist. No mere photographic or mechanical engraver ever approached him.

The theory of photogravure and photo-lithography, in the best work, is the same as that of photo-engraving, which is described in a previous Lecture. In photogravure a photograph of a drawing is usually made on a sensitised copper plate; this is coated with some acid-resisting varnish, but when the varnished plate is washed with water or some acid, the varnish covering the picture on the plate comes away, leaving the picture on the bare copper. This is then bitten in exactly the same way as an etching, the success of the plate depending entirely on the artistic intelligence of the person who does the biting. Or else the photographic print is made on the varnish itself just exactly in the same way as for a zinc block; only in this case the picture is washed away and not the surrounding portions; the biting is then proceeded with.

There are also many other processes of photogravure, while heliotype, autotype, Woodbury-type, collotype, are closely allied to it. The word type is probably used simply because by none of these methods can the plates be used with letterpress. All these processes, however, are very complicated, require expensive machinery, are quite outside the field of art, most secret, and, except theoretically, of little importance to you.

A good photogravure, for example, by Amand Durand or Ch. Dujardin is often a most excellent reproduction of a line-drawing or an etching--so good, in fact, as to be almost indistinguishable from an etching. But to endeavour to palm off pen drawings as etchings, when they have been reproduced in some such way, is to act the part of a common swindler.

Photo-lithography is exactly the same as photo-zincography--process block-making. The drawing is photographed on to transfer paper, covered with lithographic ink and transferred to the stone like any other lithograph. This is a mechanical process; there are a number of ways of getting the drawing on to the stone, and the results are described under many names. Collotypes and other varieties of photographic prints are made from gelatine or other films; they require expensive machines to produce, they are all mechanical processes which you could not readily use unless you went into the business, and are quite outside your art.

One is being continually shown processes which are going to revolutionise engraving and incidentally do away with the artist; this has not yet been accomplished. But just as one sees to-day the momentary triumph of the photographer--or rather of the person who is exploiting the poor photographer--one may remember that chromos have not annihilated painting, nor can the photograph ever be anything more than a useful aid to illustration.

LECTURE XI.

_MAKING READY FOR THE PRINTING PRESS._

Having made your drawing, had it reproduced by one of the methods I described, you must now have it printed.