A Treatise on Etching Part 3

A burnisher.

A sc.r.a.per.

An oil-stone of best quality.

A lens or magnifying-gla.s.s.

Bordering-wax.

An etching-trough made of gutta-percha or of porcelain.

India-rubber finger-gloves.

Nitric acid of forty degrees.

Tracing-paper.

Gelatine in sheets.

Chalk or sanguine.

Emery paper, No. 00 or 000.

Blotting-paper.

A roller for revarnishing, with its accessories.

To these things we must add a supply of _old_ rags.

16. =Quality and Condition of Tools and Materials.=--Too much care cannot be taken as regards the quality of the copper, which metal is used by preference for etching. Soft copper bites slowly, while on hard copper the acid acts more quickly and bites more deeply. It is to be regretted that nowadays plates are generally rolled, which does not give density enough to the metal. Formerly they were hammered, and the copper was of a better quality. Thus hammered, the metal becomes hard, and is less porous; its molecular condition is most favorable to the action of the acid, the lines are purer, and even when the work is carried to the extreme of delicacy, it is sure to be preserved in the biting.

English copper plates, and plates that have been replaned, are excellent. It is a good plan to buy thick plates, of a dimension smaller than that of the designs to be made, and to have them hammered out to the required size. The plates thus obtained will not fail to be very good.

The vice must have a wooden handle, so as to prevent burning the fingers.

To meet all possible emergencies, lamp-black may be mixed with the liquid stopping-out varnish (_pet.i.t vernis liquide_). Some engravers find that it dries too quickly, and therefore, fearing that it may chip off under the needle, use it only for stopping out; for retouching, they employ a special retouching varnish (_vernis au pinceau_).[4]

For brushes, select such as are used in water-color painting.

The silk with which the dabbers are covered must be very fine in the thread.

In order to protect his fingers, an engraver conceived the idea of smoking his plates by means of the ends of several candles or wax tapers placed together in the bottom of a little vessel: they furnish an abundance of smoke, and can be extinguished by covering up the vessel.

The smoke of a wax taper is the best; it is excellent for small plates.

The needle-holder holds short points of various thicknesses, down to the fineness of sewing-needles.

To sharpen an etching-needle, pa.s.s it over the oil-stone, holding it down flat, and turning it continually. When it has attained a high degree of sharpness, describe a large circle with it on a piece of card-board, holding it fixed between the fingers this time, and go on describing circles of a continually decreasing size. The nearer you approach to the centre, the more vertical must be the position of the needle. The fineness or the coa.r.s.eness of the point is regulated by keeping the needle away from, or bringing it nearer to, the central point.

The dry point must be ground with flat faces rather than round, so as to cut the copper, and penetrate it with ease.

If the burnisher is not sufficiently polished, it scratches the copper, and produces black spots in the proofs. To keep it in good condition, cut two grooves, the size of the burnisher, in a piece of pine board.

Rub it up and down the first of these grooves, containing emery powder; and then, to give it its final l.u.s.tre, repeat the same process, with tripoli and oil, in the second groove.

The stones which are too hard for razors are excellent for the sc.r.a.pers.

Having sharpened the sc.r.a.per with a little oil, during which operation you must hold it down flat on the stone, pa.s.s it over your finger-nail.

If the touch discloses the presence of the least bit of tooth, and if the tool does not glide along with the greatest ease, the grinding must be continued, as otherwise the sc.r.a.per will scratch the copper.

You are at liberty to use two troughs,--one for the acid bath; the other, filled with water, for washing the plate.

A gla.s.s funnel, and a bottle with a ground-gla.s.s stopper, will be necessary for filling in and keeping the etching liquid.

Various substances are used for finishing off the copper plates; the most natural is the paste obtained by rubbing charcoal on the oil-stone with oil.

Then comes the fine emery paper Nos. 00 or 000, rotten-stone, tripoli, English red, and, finally, slate. Powdered slate, produced by simply sc.r.a.ping with a knife, is excellent, used with oil and a fine rag, the same as other substances.

The varnish for revarnishing is nothing but ordinary etching-ground, dissolved in oil of lavender. It must be about as stiff as honey in winter.

The rollers for revarnishing, which can be had of different sizes, are cylindrical in form, and are terminated by two handles, which revolve in the hands. The roller ought, if possible, to cover the whole surface of the copper.[5] As soon as it has been used, it must be put out of the way of the dust.

These various recommendations are by no means unnecessary, as the least material obstacle may sometimes hinder the flight of the imagination. It is well to be armed against all the troublesome vexations of the handicraft; for the difficulties of the art are in themselves sufficient to occupy our attention.

B. PREPARING THE PLATE.

I shall now proceed to give the various talks which I had with my young pupil.

17. =Laying the Ground, or Varnishing.=--You have here a plate, I say to him; I clean it with turpentine; then, having well wiped it with a piece of fine linen, and having still further cleaned it by rubbing it with Spanish white (or whiting), I fasten it into the vice by one of its edges, taking care to place a tolerably thick piece of paper under the teeth of the vice, so as to protect the copper against injury. I now hold the plate with its back over this chafing-dish; but a piece of burning paper, or the flame of a spirit-lamp, will do equally well. As soon as the plate is sufficiently heated, I place upon its polished surface this ball of ordinary etching-ground, wrapped up in a piece of plain taffeta; the heat causes the ground to melt. If the plate is too hot, the varnish commences to boil while melting; in that case, we must allow the plate to cool somewhat, as otherwise the ground will be burned. I pa.s.s the ball over the whole surface of the copper, taking care not to overcharge the plate with the ground. Then, with the dabber, I dab it in all directions; at first, vigorously and quickly, so as to spread and equalize the layer of varnish; and finally, as the varnish cools, I apply the dabber more delicately. The appearance of inequalities, and of little protruding points in the ground, indicates that it is laid on too thick, and the dabbing must be continued, until we have obtained a perfectly h.o.m.ogeneous layer. This must be very thin,--sufficient to resist strong biting, and yet allowing the point to draw the very finest lines, which it will be difficult to do with too much varnish.

18. =Smoking.=--Without waiting for the plate to cool, I turn it over, and present its varnished side to the smoke of a torch or a wax taper, which I hold at a distance of about two centimetres from the plate, so as not to injure the varnish. I keep moving the flame about in all directions, to avoid burning the varnish (which latter would take place if the flame remained too long at the same point), and thus I obtain a brilliant black surface. All the transparency is gone; we see neither copper nor varnish, and this is a sign that our operation has succeeded.

All we need do now is to allow the plate to cool and the varnish to harden, and then you can commence making your drawing.

You call my attention to the fact that the varnish, in cooling, loses the brilliancy which it had in its liquid state. This is always the case. And see the perfect neatness and evenness of the varnished and smoked surface! Here is a plate which was spoiled in the smoking. The first thing that strikes us is that we see the marks left by the pa.s.sage of the taper. At a pinch, these marks might, perhaps, be no inconvenience to us in working; but here the brilliant black is broken by very dull spots. These are places in which the varnish was burned; it will scale off under the needle, and has lost the power of resisting the acid. We must therefore clean this plate with spirits of turpentine, and commence operations afresh.

The ground is blackened, because its natural transparency does not permit us to see the work of the point. This work produces what might be called a negative design; that is to say, a design in bright lines on a black ground. This is rather perplexing at first, but you will soon become accustomed to it.

C. DRAWING ON THE PLATE WITH THE NEEDLE.

19. =The Transparent Screen.=--You must place yourself so as to face this window, and between you and it we must introduce, in an inclined position, a transparent screen made of tracing paper stretched on a wooden frame, which will prevent your seeing the window. This screen will soften and strain the light; it will reduce the reflection of the copper, and will allow you to see what you are doing.

In designing on the plate out of doors, the screen is unnecessary, since, as the light falls equally upon the copper from all directions, the reflection is done away with, and the copper does not dazzle the eye as it does when the light emanates from a single source.

20. =Needles or Points.=--You may use a single needle, or you may use several of different degrees of sharpness, even down to sewing-needles, as you will see later on; but your work on the plate will always look uniform, without distance and without relief. The modelling and coloring of the design must be left to the acid.

The point must be held on the plate as perpendicularly as possible, as the purity of the line depends on the angle of incidence which the point makes with the copper; furthermore, it must be possible to direct it freely and easily in all directions, and it is, therefore, necessary that the needle should not be too sharp. To make sure of this, draw a number of eights on the margin of your plate, or simply an oblique line from below upwards in the direction of the needle. If it does not glide along easily, if it attacks the copper and catches in it, you must regrind it.

This is important, as in principle the function of the needle is to trace the design by removing the varnish from the copper, while it must avoid scratching it. By scratching the metal we encroach on the domain of the acid, and inequality of work is the result, since the acid acts more vigorously on those parts which have been scratched than on those which have simply been laid bare. We must feel the copper under the point, without, however, penetrating into it.

The opposite effect is produced if we operate too timidly. In this case we do not reach the copper. We remove the blackened surface, and it seems as if we had also removed the varnish, since we see the copper shining through it. But we shall find later, from the fact that the acid does not bite, that we did not bear heavily enough on the needle.

At first there is a tendency to proceed as in drawing on paper, giving greater lightness to the touch of the point in the distances, and bearing on it more vigorously in the foregrounds. But this is useless.

There are certain artists, nevertheless, who prefer to attack the copper with cutting points in the finer as well as in the more vigorous parts of their work, and to bite in with strong acid; others, again, dig resolutely into the copper wherever they desire to produce a powerful tone. Abraham Bosse, in applying etching to line-engraving, advises his readers to cut the copper slightly in the lines which are to appear fine, and to dig vigorously into the plate for those lines which are to be very heavy, so that delicate as well as strong work may be obtained at one and the same biting. As it is necessary in this sort of engraving to retouch the heavy lines with the burin, we can understand that in the way shown the work of the instrument named may be facilitated.

21. =Temperature of the Room.=--In summer the temperature softens the varnish, and the needle works pliantly and easily; in winter the cold hardens the varnish, so that it is apt to scale off under the point, especially at the crossing of the lines. It is advisable, therefore, to have your room well heated, or to supply yourself with two cast-metal plates or two lithographic stones, or even two bricks, if you please, which must be warmed and placed under your plate alternately, so as to keep it at a soft and uniform temperature. Practice has shown that work done at the right temperature is softer than that executed when the varnish is too cold, even if it is not sufficiently so to scale off.

22. =The Tracing.=--According to the kind of work to be done, we shall either draw directly on the plate, or, in the case of a drawing which is to be copied of its own size, we shall make use of a tracing. Many engravers emanc.i.p.ate themselves from the tracing, and accustom themselves to reversing the original while they copy it. The manner of using a tracing is well known. We shall need tracing-paper, paper rubbed with sanguine on one side, and a pencil. The tracing is made on the tracing-paper, and this is afterwards placed on the prepared plate; between the tracing and the plate we introduce the paper rubbed with sanguine; then, with a very fine lead-pencil, or with a somewhat blunt needle, we go carefully over the lines of the design, which, under the gentle pressure of the tool, is thus transferred in red to the black ground. It is unnecessary to use much pressure, as otherwise your tracing will be obscured by the sanguine and you will find neither precision nor delicacy in it. Furthermore, you run the risk of injuring the ground. The tracing is used simply to indicate the places where the lines are to be, and it must be left to the needle to define them.

23. =Reversing the Design.=--Whenever your task is the interpretation of an object of fixed aspect, such as a monument, or some well-known scene, or human beings in a given att.i.tude, you will be obliged to reverse the drawing on your plate, as otherwise it will appear reversed in the proof. You must, therefore, reverse your tracing, which is a very easy matter, as the design is equally visible on both sides of the tracing-paper. Gelatine in sheets, however, offers still greater advantages when a design is to be reversed. Place the gelatine on the design, and, as it is easily scratched, make your tracing with a very fine-pointed and sharp needle, occasionally slipping a piece of black paper underneath the gelatine to a.s.sure yourself that you have omitted nothing. The point, in scratching the gelatine, raises a bur, and this must be removed gently with a paper stump, or with the sc.r.a.per, after which operation the tracing is rubbed in with powdered sanguine. Having now thoroughly cleaned the sheet, so that no powder is left anywhere but in the furrows, we turn the sheet over and lay it down on the plate, and finally rub it on its back in all directions, for which purpose we use the burnisher dipped in oil. The design, reversed, will be found traced on the varnish in extremely fine lines.

24. =Use of the Mirror.=--The tracing finished, place a mirror before your plate on the table, and as close by as possible; between the plate and the mirror fix the design to be reproduced, and then draw the reflected image. For the sake of greater convenience, take your position at right angles to the window instead of facing it, so that the light pa.s.sing through the transparent screen on your left falls on the mirror and the design, as well as on your work. When drawing on the copper from nature, if the design is to be reversed, you must place yourself with your back to the object to be drawn, and so that you can easily see it in a small mirror set up before your plate. This is the way Meryon proceeded: standing, and holding in the same hand his plate and a little mirror, which he always carried in his pocket, he guided his point with the most absolute surety, without any further support.