Etching shares some aspects of linocut, in that you cut into a medium to form your image. What is different, however, is that in etching, the part you carve is the inked part of the final image, but in linocut or woodcut, the part you carve is the white or negative part of the image.
Tonight I started with some sketches of a tree, but they quickly turned into a much more graphic print of a wave. After creating the original image, the next step is using a super-sharp tool (which likely has a super-technical name I don't know) to cut into a piece of plexiglass that is placed over your image. Afterwards, you have a nice etched image.
After that, it's a trip to the cabinet to dig out the etching ink. I was lucky enough to find blue ink this week, which I thought appropriate to use with my wave. You take the ink out of the jar (which is likely cakey and gross if you are using ink at the public studio) and rub it into the lines you've etched with a cloth called a tarlatan. You employ the tarlatan to work the ink into the lines, and then use another (clean) portion of the cloth to wipe the plexiglass clean so that only the lines have the ink in them.
For etching, you have to use paper that is wet. Since the ink is worked into the tiny etched spaces, the water helps to draw it out of the plexiglass grooves. You blot the paper with two gianter pieces of blotting paper, and then set it all up on the press.
The first print was clean with nice crisp lines. For the second go, I went with a different look as I prepared the plate:
When I wiped off the plate after working the ink into the etched grooves, I decided to leave some of the ink on the plate instead of wiping it completely clean. It struck me as misty and ocean-wave like. I quite enjoy the effect!
No comments:
Post a Comment