Fine Art Prints and Printmaking

I made some etchings of New Orleans shotgun houses, mostly based on pictures and sketches made on trips there. Already, my heart was back home in New Orleans, although my body was living in Santa Fe.

These are three etchings of shotgun houses. Ferric Chloride etch, Z-Acryl acrylic ground, on copper. There was no additional working the plate after the etch. Note the bold lines attained with this combination of materials. The first picture is and etching of a house at 1325 North Lopez street, very close to the first apartment we rented in New Orleans when we moved there in 2016.

At around that same time, I was learning to use the photogravure technique. I made a few prints from graphite drawings using the photopolymer etch technique. I photographed the drawings, adjusted size to suit and the brightness and contrast for the gravure technique, the printed the image on Pictorico transparency plastic sheet on an ink jet printer. The transparency is used to expose the polymer plate in the process described in the section on gravure.

I also printed many gravures from photos taken of New Orleans houses. And even one of a New Orleans stable or carriage house in the Garden District.

I also did a large series of portaits of famous composers on small plates, sized to make greeting cards. But with litle traffic to the studio during the pandemic, and most of the few visitors not recognizing the composers in the pictures anyway, I quickly abandoned that project. And for the most part, quit making greeting cards for a non-existant market.

I did a series of small (6 x 8) etching of local bars in some of the neighborhoods we frequented. Here are "B.J's in the Bywater, where we went to the Blood Jet poetry readings and Little Freddie King plays on Fridays, and "Vaughan's" a block away where Kermit Ruffins used to play on Thursdays, both in the Bywater. And "Pal's", "Parkway", and "Liuzza'a By the Track", all in Bayou St. John. And "Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop" in the Quarter and "The Olde Pointe Bar" in Algiers Point. And "Snake and Jake's Christmas Tree Lounge", handy to the Tulane campus, uptown.

The next step was to add aquatint to the etchings. Following are some samples of work where aquatint was used and there are plenty more in the section on aquatint.

First, a couple of etchings of tattooed ladies. These were done as exercises in line work to represent the tattoos, similar to other images of lace. In the second image, aquatint was used to darken the background. These images are all 8 x 10 inches.

Aquatint takes a while to learn enough to produce consistent results, but it is useful and fun. It has some dis-advantages, however. Although it is a good way to produce a dark black area, the plates are tricky to ink well when wanting to produce a number of identical prints. And the surface of the aquatinted area, made of very small bits of copper protruding from the etched background, wears away more rapidly than other areas of the plate so the dark area may fade with subsequent impressions. As happened with the many later "editions" of Goya's plates printed and published after his death.

I also used drypoint to make dark areas. It is possible to get a deep, velvety, black with drypoint, but that technique has a similar problem to aquatint in that the fine burr produced by the drypoint needle also wears away fairly quickly as the plate is wiped and printed. And since it is the burring of the line that holds the extra ink and gives the blurred line characterist of drypoint, the dark areas may also fade with repeated impressions.

Again, I was interested in using the technique to produce heavy dense black areas. As noted in the section on technique, when making laser-printed plates, this is where it gets tricky and you have to know how to set up the machines and software you are using to get a usable print.

And since I also wanted to use the technique for color prints, I had to solve the issues around registration. More discussion and information in the section on Registration.

Here's a color lithograph using four plates made with one of the registration systems I use. The image is 9.5 x 6.5 inches and was printed using polyester plates that were 11 x 8.5 inches which allowed me to register the plates using the on-plate marking system as described in the technical section on Lithography. It was about the fourth lithograph I made and because I had not yet figured out how to "bake" the laser plates, it degraded swiftly and I only got about 6 impressions before the plates faded or lost detail. The image was processed from a photo using GIMP and the color separations were done as separate layers. The colors chosen for the separate layers were colors in the original photograph, not a CMYK separation. Then each layer was printed onto the polyster plates separately. There was no "master plate", but there was a black color plate.

In preparing the plates for this image, I also converted the individual colors in each layer to black, so I ended up with a series of four plates, each of which was black on the plate, but was printed by inking with a different color. In doing this, I increased the density of the dots produced by the laser printer in each color field so the area would take up more ink and print a more intense color.

Laser printers and copyers are set up to render half tones by using intermediate densities of dots. Lighter colors or lighter shades of the same color will print with fewer dots and the resulting plate will hold less ink and print the color lighter. This is something you can take advantage of, as you will see in later examples, or something you can by-pass by converting each color, after separation, to black to get a consistent, dense application of the ink from each plate.

There are other examples of lithographs in that section.

Current work in lithography involves the use of colors, printing multiple plates using the pin registration system.

Following are some samples.

The first is a photolithograph from a photograph of a mural painting of local singer Meschiaya Lake on a side of a building in the Marigny. The lines created by the bricks which were prominent because much of the mortar had eroded away befort the wall was painted, made for an interesting appearance and the many colors used made for a registration challenge. The image is about 8 x 10 and there were eight plates used. Separations done to layers in GIMP but the colors were not converted to black, hence the variations in density of each color.

Here are a couple of photolithographs, made by importing a photo to GIMP at 300 PPI, converting it to monochrome color, adjusting contrast as needed, then printing it to a laser plate in a laser printer set at 1200 DPI. The images are about 10 x 8 inches. The original photographs were taken at a Super Sunday Mardi Gras Indian event about 2015 or 2016.

I played about a little with both these images. The first one was of an Indian dressed primarily in colors of blue and carrying a banner honoring a recently deceased Big Chief, Bo Dollis. I wanted to print the image in color.

I imported the photograph into GIMP and did color separations into layers, creating three layers (and three plates) for the shades of blue and violet in the feathers, and other layers for gray, yellow, dark red, red, green and black. Again, there was no master plate. Nine plated in all, printed with pin registration system. The final print looks like this.

Then I did another version of the same image. I went back to the original GIMP file and combined the three blue layers into one. I combined several of the other layers (red and dark red) into a second layer. Then I made plates from these two layers and a master plate. I printed a blue layer and a red oxide layer then overprinted these with the black master plate, which was identical to the original black print shown above.

This "simplified" color version looks like this'

The other Indian, in the sepia image above, was dressed in green and yellow feathers. I wanted to make a color print of that image also, but went about it differently. using a "master plate", identical to that used to print the sepia image above but intended to be printed with black in this print, I overlaid it with a blank polyester plate and drew on areas to be colored using a lithographic crayon. I used a #5 crayon, which gave good detail for the feathers, but is was less greasy that turned out to be ideal, so I will use a #1 or #1 in the future. Once I had made a plate for green, I made one for yellow and one for red and one for brown. As it turned out, I could have made the brown areas by printing red over green and will also be more attentive to the possibilities of color mixing by the printing itself in the future. Once the four color plates were printed and dry, I printed the master plate in black. I used the pin registration system. The final image is 10 x 8 inches.

So there is plenty more to explore using lithography. Present projects are incorporating a combination of an etched master plate with lithographic plates for color. It is just too expensive to use 4 or more copper plates for a print. Polyester lithographic plates are inexpensive. And can be thrown away after printing, saving storage space.

I did experiment a bit with lithography on wooden panels, a technique known also as "Mokulito" or "Mokurito". This involves creating an image on a sanded plywood panel using markers or litho crayons or similar material, then treating the panel with a gum arabic solution before printing the plate under modest pressure or even with a baren. The technique was said to produce an image in which the grain of the wood was also visible. Not so much, at least in my experience. I would be more interested in a technique that has the wood grain as part of the background and a stark image against it. And I may try getting that later using two wooden plates, but for now, I am sticking with the polyester lithograhpic medium. The polyester plates are much less expensive than plywood anyway. Here is one sample of a lithograph on wood. The image was created with lithographic crayons and printed using a "fountain solution" containing only diluted gum arabic and citric acid. Details in the information on fountain solution in the lithography section.

After the first few lithographs satisfied me that I could use that tecnique in the studio, I added photopolymer etching, or "photogravre" to the techniques I use. The first step was to get a UV exposure unit, but once that cost was sunk and the plates acquired, I was able to calibrate the machine and experiment to find the exposure times and printing techniques that worked in that studio. Naturally, after the move in early 2022, all the calibration and experimentation was repeated.

Details of the gravure process, from notes on calibration of the UV exposure unit through manipulation of the image prior to creating the plate are discussed in the section on photogravure,

Here are some samples of prints made from photographs. All are about 8 x 10 inches.

This print is from a photograph taken in 1969 on a trip to Fort Macomb, on the Chef Menteur Pass approach to New Orleans. It was one of two forts built in 1822 to guard the approaches to lake Pontchartrain and the lake side of New Orleans. The forts were built after the British had invaded Louisiana that way, an invasion that ended with the "Battle of New Orleans" in Chalmette. Both forts have been owned by the State of Louisiana since the early 20th century, but the state only had the money to preserve one, Fort Pike, about 10 miles further in on the "rigolets" approach to the lake. Fort Macomb continues do decay. Fort Pike is closed to visitors, awaiting state funding to repair damage from hurricanes.

I have a lot more photos from that visit and may print them some day. In this print, I wanted to capture the moody sense of decay at the abandoned fort.

The first photo is of an auto scrap yard just on the western side of Clovis. The second is along the road to Vaughn. The third is in Encino.

This is from a photo of a large gazebo-like structure and a fountain at the Fort Brown site in Brownsville. Fort Brown was the location of a U.S. Army fort during the Mexican-American War. It was established in 1846 and the city of Brownsville was established in 1849, after the war resulted in the land becoming part of the U.S. Fort Brown is also known as the site where Dr. William Gorgas contracted and survived Yellow Fever and did his preliminary work on the disease and its cause. He developed sanitary measures later used in Panama which enabled the building of the Panama Canal. The hospital he managed there and the morgue where he and associates autopsied yellow fever victims are still there. The fort was acquired by the City of Brownsville and Texas Southmost College in 1948 and is presently the site of the College.

Print from a photograph of one of the 1200 live oak trees in New Orleans' City Park.

Print made by layering images in GIMP then printing the result on a transparency. It is possible also to layer transparencies when making the exposure.

Once the copper is cut to size, it must be prepared for application of the material which will resist the etching solution, the "ground" or "resist". This means the plate must be scrupulously mechanically and chemically cleaned so the resist material will adhere to the metal. This is a multi-step process involving sanding and polishing the plate smooth, then removing grease and dirt to chemically clean the surface.

The steps in preparing a plate follow:

One: Burnishing the edges of the plate rounds them over and removes sharp edges that could cut the press bed, the printing paper, and the press blankets. Rounding the edges can be done with a hand file or sand paper, but the easiest and fastest way is to use a special tool called a "de-burring tool". The tool is different from the scrapers and burnishers used on the surface of the plate. The de-burring looks like this:

The hooked end swivels and has a sharp cutting edge and a blunt tip. In use, the tool slides along the surface of the plate allowing the sharp cutting edge of the tool to remove a thin strip of metal from the edge. There are several versions of this tool and the best one has tips that are replaceable when the tool becomes dull. Availabe through Amazon.

Once the edges and corners are smoothed, the printing surface needs to be prepared to receive the “ground” or resist material, and the back needs to be protected from the action of the mordant when the plate is etched.

Second, inspect the plate to see if there are scratches or marks on it that will catch ink and print. If the plate has a protective plastic cover layer, remove it and inspect the surface. Pick one side of the plate to work on. You will polish one side only (the front) and will put contact paper, adhesive shelf lining paper, on the "back". I usually cut the contact paper about an inch oversize all around, remove the backing , place the paper on the work surface and put one edge of the plate face up on the paper near the edge closest to the edge of the gable. By starting at the end towards you and then sliding the plate and paper over the edge of the table, you can get a pretty smooth application. Then put the plate face down on the table and rub the contact paper starting in the center to adhere it to the metal and work any air bubbles out toward the edges. I use a Exacto knife to trim the paper along the plate edge, cutting from below (the backside of the plate) and taking care not to scratch the face of the plate.

The next step is polishing the face of the plate. Plates can be polished by hand. Start with emery paper or other wet sanding paper of 320 grit and work on a perfectly smooth flat surface using a sanding block and pad to hold the paper. Depending on how deep the marks on the plate may be, start with a 220 or 320 grit paper and sand the surface until the marks are gone. Then work through progressively finer grit paper – 600, then 800, 1000, and finishing with a 2500 grit paper. Then polish using a "rouge" or polishing compound as used by jewelers or auto body finishers. This is a long and boring process. Not recommended.

Plates are also easily and quickly polished using a power sander-polisher. I have used a variable speed 5 inch diameter random orbital sander-polisher with good results. These are available from arious manufacturers such as DeWalt, Bosch, Makita, etc, and are available at Lowes or Home Depot.

These "palm sanders" use discs that attach with hook and loop (Velcro). Sanding discs of various grits, including very fine grits such as 800, 1200,and 2500 are available from Amazon. If preparing plates for engraving, you will also need a sheepskin or fabric polishing pad and polishing compound to produce a mirror finish after sanding with the finer grits.

If using a power sander secure the plate when sanding it or the sander may spin it away. Use a piece of plywood as a sanding base and glue very thin strips of wood (the thickness of the plates) along two sides to form a corner pocket to hold the plate and prevent it moving about when sanding. Clamp the plywood to the work table and don’t forget to use respiratory protection and if possible work outside, as the sanding and polishing will create fine metal dust.

In general, unless you are preparing a plate for an engraver, you can finish up with the 1500 grit sanding paper and it will be fine for routine etching, as the final cleaning uses "Brasso" and/or "Barkeepers Friend", which both contain fine polishing material. I also keep some finer paper on hand (2500, 3000) to touch up a plate before the final cleaning if needed.

Chemical cleaning is done after the plate is sanded and polished smooth. This cleaning is a chemical and mechanical cleaning to remove any grease or oily residue. The process goes something like this:

Wash the front and back of the plate with warm water and mild (dishwashing) detergent. Dry with a lint free paper towel or soft cotton cloth. (Kim-Wipes are good.)

Re-wet the plate and apply a good amount of Brasso metal cleaner. Use a gentle circular scrubbing motion to work the Brasso over the entire front surface of the plate. Brasso is a solution of diatomaceous earth as a mild abrasive combined with a mild ammonia solution. You will notice the odor of ammonia when you use it. Wash the Brasso off under running water. Repeat the cleaning with Brasso for a second time.

Sprinkle "Barkeeper's Friend" cleanser over the surface of the wet plate. Barkeeper's Friend is a dry powder cleanser that is also diatomaceous earth but combined with oxalic acid. Again, carefully and gently scrub the surface of the plate. Rinse off under running water and repeat the cleaning. During the two step cleaning with first the alkaline (Brasso) and then the acid (Barkeeper's Friend you may notice the copper changes color to a lighter pink shade. That is fine.

During the final rinsing with water, the water should sheet across the entire surface of the plate and not bead up. You may have to repeat the final cleaning step several times to get all the edges cleaned.

Wipe the plate dry with a lint free paper towel, Kim-Wipe, or clean newsprint, front and back. The plate is now ready to apply the resist or ground. My current preparation method for copper is a bit simpler because I am using a different ground as explained below. This preparation and cleaning method should be suitable for any ground you might like to use. As will be noted below, I am currently using B.I.G ground, and I find it a bit more forgiving in regard to the chemical cleaning of a plate. Currently, I hand sand the plate to a satisfactory smoothness finishing up with 1500 grit papere, then clean it with Brasso, and do a final degreasing with full strength dish washing detergent rubbed over the plate paying particular attention to the corners and edges. I use Dawn detergent full strength. Most detergents are alkaline and with this final cleaning, you may see a blue color develop probably a copper nitrate formed by reaction of the copper with an ammonia solution to form a blue copper hydroxide. This is the same thing that happens when using Brasso to clean a plate and is probably the mechanism of the blue color that forms if you try using "new and improved" Pledge floor was as a resist. Then after a thorough final water rinse (front and back) dry the plate with Kim Wipes or lint free paper towels and apply the B.I.G. ground.

Grounds/resists:

I started out using Charbonnet wax hard ground and soft ground and also similar wax-based grounds from Graphic Chemical. These require the use of a hot plate with carefully controlled temperature and a brayer to spread the wax ground over the plate surface. The technique is not difficult to master, but something of a nuisance. Also, even the "hard ground" is relatively soft and can be easily marked or scratched in handling. After etching the plate, the ground must be removed to proof print the plate, and re-applied if a second etch is desired. But applying the wax over a previously etched plate is a bit more difficult due to the now irregular surface of the etched plate. One must work the wax into all the etched lines and areas then roll the surface with the brayer.

Also, at least in my hands, the wax grounds did not work well when first experimenting with salt etches, copper sulfate and ferric chloride. Performance was particularly poor on zinc plates etched with copper sulfate, where the etchant quickly penetrated the wax resist and resulted in "foul bite" all over the plate.

Here's an example of copper sulfate etch on zinc. This is by Rob and he has taken advantage of the extensive foul bite in the background for this image to create a wintry scene, but in other cases, the ground failed almost completely and I soon discarded this ground and the copper sulfate etch.

B.I.G.

There are newer grounds which are easier to use. B.I.G. (Bigelow Intaglio Ground), formerly Bigelow Ink Ground, was developed by Andrew Bigelow of the Trefeglwys Printmakers. There is plenty of information about using this material online, both on their web site, YouTube, and Facebook. Just search under Trefeglwys Printmking.

BIG comes in a tube, which keeps it from drying out and makes it easy to dispense. Put a small amount on a glass work surface and use a brayer to roll it out, much as you would to condition any ink. Load the roller and roll the plate vigorously with firm pressure to apply a thin but uniform coating. It will have the eggshell appearance when properly rolled on.

At this stage, the BIG has the consistency of a traditional wax soft ground and can be handled much as a soft ground. Details on the technique are provided with the ground and in the online sources.

Once the ground is applied to use it as a hard ground it is necessary to bake the plate. A convection oven is best for this, but I use a conventional oven with temperature at about 270 degrees F. (use an oven thermometer to check temperature) and bake the plate for about 5 to 7 minutes. Longer times will harden the ground more and will make it more difficult to remove, but even the hardest baked ground will clean easily as described below.

Remove the plate from the oven and allow to cool completely and it is ready to go. The ground will harden a bit if the plate is stored for some days before using it, so with BIG, it is easiest to just prepare a plate when needed. Although I generally do five or six at a time and store them wrapped in newsprint and they are fine to use even weeks later.

I clean the roller and work surface with mineral oil.

Once the plate is scribed and etched, I remove the ground with hot water and washing soda or Brasso. If the ground is very hard, or I am in more of a hurry, I use CitraSolv. The ground also removes easily with denatured alcohol. This latter fact is particularly useful for I often coat the edges of a plate with stop-out shellac to prevent biting along them and also use the stop-out when doing a series of etches, as when lightly etching an area, stopping it out and further etching the rest of the plate. Also, when doing aquatint, the area that is not being aquatinted is protected with stop-out. Stop-out is shellac based and removes with alcohol. Also, for the spray-can aquatint technique, I use black lacquer spray, which also is alcohol soluable. So denatured alcohol makes a great one-stop cleaner for the BIG ground, the stop out, and the lacquer.

BIG has worked well with the ferric chloride etch on copper and is currently my go-to ground. One tip is to apply the ground as thinly as possible when doing delicate line work. You should be able to see the copper color through the ground slightly before baking. If you want a more robust line and plan to scribe the plate with vigor, the BIG can be applied thicker and baked longer. It is quite a flexible product and some experimentation will be rewarded.

Acrylic grounds

The newer acrylic grounds are easier to apply, more durable, and do not need to be removed when printing a proof. They produce a very hard surface and it feels very different when scribing a plate, as it is brittle and scratches and flakes away rather then having the smooth, easy, almost flowing feel of working a wax ground. The acrylic grounds cand also be used to make a very heavy etched line with the ferric chloride etch.

Z-Acryl

Z-Acryl hard ground was the first acrylic ground I used and it was my favorite. It was a modified version of acrylic floor wax with a bit of coloring added, but basically it was still pretty clear when on the plate and it is hard to see your lines when working the plate. There are various recipes for adding carbon black or black ink to the ground, but I found it easy enough to use strong side lighting to see the lines as I worked on a plate. I think of this form of ground as sort of "digital" and the was grounds as more "analogue", since when working a plate with the acrylic ground, a line is either there or not and it is harder to get the very fine lines and subtle gradations in degree of etch more easily obtained with the was grounds. That said, it is relatively easy to create differing depths of etch on an acrylic grounded plate through use of stop out and successive trips through the etching solution to produce the desired effect.

Z-Acryl was applied to a plate by pouring it over the plate, then standing the plate and allowing the excess to run off. The material dried very rapidly, so the plate was available in about half an hour.

Alas, Z-Acryl is no longer made or available.

For some purposes, ordinary Pledge acrylic floor wax will work. Pledge is the ancestor of Z-Acryl, and made by S.C.Johnson Company, whose chemists worked with Mark Zaffron to develop Z-Acryl. There are, however, many differing versions of the Pledge products. Put simply, acrylic "waxes" are generally removed by an alkaline solution. So "improved" acrylic floor wazes that advertise they also "clean" or remove old floor wax generally have some alkaline chemical, usually an ammonia, in them. And if applied to copper, the ammonia produces an interesting chemical reaction and etches the plate in an uncontrolled fashion. Recently, Pledge re-introduced its "original" formula, which seems to lack the alkaline component and will work as a resist. But if you choose to try this, here are a few cautions. First, read the label carefully and get the "original" formula Pledge. Second, remember the product will have various other chemicals, including some of the volitile organics that had been removed when the Z-Acryl was formulated. Adequate ventilation would be a must. And third, if applied too thick, this ground may flake or chip when scribing your image, making a wider or more irregular line than you desire.

Lascaux Hard Ground.

Lascaux Hard Ground is also a specially modified version of an acrylic floor wax. It has some white color added, but is still pretty clear when dried so it is sometimes hard to see your lines as you make them. As with Z-Acryl, some add additional color as carbon black or black ink to the ground, but these additives are difficult to mix in evenly and do not result in a very dense color.

To apply the hard ground, set the plate(s) vertical in a glass tray, leaning back against some sturdy support. Using the dropper/squirt bottle the ground comes in, flow the ground along the top edge, allowing it to run downward across the surface of the plate. This is where the care in cleaning the plate pays off. If your plate was clean enough for the final rinse water to "sheet" off, the ground will flow easily. It is sometimes necessary to use a soft brush to help it completely cover the plate. The goal is to make as thin a layer of ground as you can. The ground dries very quickly so you will have to move fast. Once the plate is covered, move it onto some paper towel, standing nearly vertically, to let the last of the ground run off and wick into the towel. When nearly dry, reposition the plate to a fresh towel, so it does not become glued to the towel. Allow the ground to dry overnight or for 24 hours before beginning to work on it. As you work on the plate some fine dust will accumulate, which can be removed with a soft brush or cloth .

When using an acrylic hard ground, the plate may be proofed after etching without removing the ground. The proof will look slightly different than an impression done after removing the ground because the depth of the line etch will be somewhat greater, due to the thickness of the ground. A little experience will inform you how to allow for this sight difference when evaluating a proof.

Acrylic grounds are removed with a mildly alkaline water solution. It is easy to make up a solution of one part dish detergent to nine parts tap water plus the addition of about one to two table spoons of soda ash (sodium carbonate or washing soda) to each quart of the solution. It is easiest to soak the plate in the solution for about 10 to 15 minutes, then gently scrub off the remaining ground. Wear gloves, as the soda ash is mildly caustic. Because the ground is clear, it may be difficult to see when it is completely removed, so more than one soaking may be needed.

Acrylic grounds also can be removed with citrus or soy-based solvents.

Acrylic grounds can also be used in an air brush to make an aqua tint. But this is a bit tricky as the acrylic solution dries really fast and it is hard to keep the air brush clean and open when working and it needs scrupulous cleaning when done.

Aqua tint

Aquatint is an etching technique that produces areas of tone rather than lines. It is used most often in combination with traditional line etching to produce areas of shaded tone. It has also been used historically to print in colour by printing with multiple plates in different colours or by making monochrome black master prints with a second plate of aquatint used for the color areas.

Etching examples

Example of a plate which has been first etched then aquatint applied to the background and a second plate with aquatint area used to apply the color. The plates are copper, 9 x 6 inches in size. The first image is of the etched plate. The second image shows that same plate after three densities of aquatint are applied. The third image shows the addition of color by using a second plate with aquatint in just the areas to carry the color.

Here's another print with original etching done on copper. Then three additional plates were made for each additional color with aquatint used in the area to be colored. The plates are 12 x 9 inches. In the actual printing, the three color plates were printed first and the black master etched plate printed last.

Aquatint was originally done using very finely powdered rosin which was hand dusted onto a plate, or placed in a special box in which air blown from a bellows would disperse a small amount of the rosin into the air inside the box, and the rosin would settle evenly on the plate. Once the plate was coated with rosin, it was heated to melt the rosin and adhere it to the plate, and the plate was then cooled and etched.

When combined with etching, the aquatinting was done after the etching. Areas of the plate that were not to be aquatinted were protected with a resist, such as shellac or similar liquid ground, termed a "stop out" and then the entire plate coated with rosin and etched. Only the areas not protected would aquatint. If darker as well as lighter areas of aquatint are desired, the first aquatint etch will be short, the plate removed from the etchant, washed, dried, and stop out applied to the lightest areas. The plate is then etched again, and the process repeated to make progressively darker areas of aquatint. For practical purposes, three levels of darkness of aquatint are about all that will be useful. When the etching is complete, the rosin and the stopout are removed with denatured alcohol, the plate cleaned, and then printed in usual fashion.

The areas of aquatint where the rosin was deposited and fused to the plate do not etch. The areas between the little drop-like rosin deposits will etch. And will etch deeper with each trip through the etchant. One limiting factor to the depth you can achieve with aquatint is the tendance of the etchant to also work sideways and undercut the edges of the deeper and deeper line. You can etch enough to begin to remove the protected rosin coated areas from below and beside.

The result of the aquatint etch is that there will be small drop like areas of un-etched copper surrounded by etching of varying depth. The etched areas will hold the ink. The un-etched areas will look white, resembling very fine drops of water on a dark background when the plate is printed. Hence the name, Aquatint.

Goya was a master of aquatint. Gene Kloss, of New Mexico, was a modern master of aquatint. Anyone interested in what aquatint can do should look at their work.

Aquatint has several disadvantages. One is that it is a very difficult technique to master using the old rosin method. And the rosin is a potent allergen as well. I use a simple spray can of black lacquer to coat a plate with a very, very light spray and aquatint that. It also removes with alcohol. Another disadvantage is that an aquatint plate is hard to ink and especially hard to ink consistently if doing an edition. And aquatinted areas of copper are not very durable, so the plate degrades quickly limiting the number of impressions attainable before print quality becomes unacceptable. Aquatint is also a "destructive" process, in that if you aquatint an etched plate, you cannot un-do the aquatint if you find it unsatisfactory or want to re-print some of the plain etched plate. So, if you plan to aquatint an image, either do the etching and print a full edition of it before placing the aquatint, or make a second identical plate and aquatint that to preserve the original etching.

Below are a few examples of aquatint used in combination with etching.

The first is an image of a minimalist sculpture called "coupled forms" by Arthur Silverman. Artie was a friend of ours from our first time in New Orleans and we were delighted to find this piece in the courtyard at Woldenberg Village when we lived there. The plate is 7 x 5 inches.

This is an image made from a photo I took at the Carrollton cemetery. Again, the first step was to make the line etching of the statue, then add layers of aquatint. I used the multiple shades of aquatint to not only make some shadows, but also to create a mysterious looking sky with scudding clouds. The plate is 10 x 8 inches in size. I printed it in black and sepia as you can see.

In this print, the aquatint is used to produce a heavy velvety black background and shadows. Again, two levels of darkness were created with differing times in the etchant after the spray-can aquatint was applied. In addition, when inking the plate, I took care to apply the ink heavily in the background and do minimal wiping in the darker areas. The plate is 10 x 8 inches. The original etching and the aquatinted version are shown.

You can find additional prints incorporating aquatint in the gallery of print images above. Here is one final illustration of the use of this technique. The first picture shows the basic line etching, the second the addition of layers of aquatint, and the final two show it after a little "spit bite" to create shadows for the "steppers". The plate is 10 x 8 inches and it was final printed in both black and sepia.