About Me - The Magic of Printmaking

by GEORGE RAAB

THE MAGIC OF PRINTMAKING reaches back into the dawn of time when man printed the image of his hand on the wall of the cave and left it there. Today printmaking ranks with painting, sculpture and drawing as one of the principal means by which artists express themselves. Many great artists such as Durer, Rembrandt and Goya did some of their most significant work in this medium. Picasso. Braque. Miro, Klee, Giacometti, Poliakoff and Vasarely -- just to mention a few of the modern masters who have worked in graphic art -- have continued the tradition of fine prints.

The techniques of printmaking allow the artist to produce a number of almost identical images. Each one has its own character due to the imperfect nature of the hand inking, wiping, and the printing of the individual print within the edition. Sculptors follow a comparable procedure in casting a number of identical versions from a single model and hand finishing each result; in this way the work can be enjoyed by a wider audience. However, the question of quantity is not of primary interest to either the printmaker or the sculptor. Prints, other than monoprints, are usually in multiples, and not single creations. Accordingly, they are less expensive than unique works of art such as paintings or drawings. While an oil painting by a noted artist may be well beyond the price range most of us can afford, an original print is usually relatively inexpensive.

The etcher is a rare combination of artist, craftsman and chemist. He uses an indirect method of transferring an image from one surface to another to accomplish vigorous, straightforward results and he performs his craft skillfully with techniques, processes and recipes that are sometimes highly complex.

My intaglio images are made by creating textures and grooves below the surface of zinc or copper plates. The plate is hand inked and wiped for printing. The stiff etching ink fills in wherever the metal has been disturbed and the rest of the plate is wiped; first with tarletan, then cheesecloth, and finally by hand. Damp acid-free rag paper is laid over the inked plate and the two are run between the heavy rollers of my manually-operated etching press under high pressure. When the paper is peeled from the plate its absorbent quality pulls the ink from the incisions. The print is then placed under weight between heavy blotters to dry. My last step is to occasionally hand colour the resulting image.

The following is a quick glossary of the techniques I use most.

Line engraving: This was first used as a print process in the fifteenth century. The image is cut into the plate with a burin or graver which has a tempered steel rod with a lozenge-shaped point and rounded handle. It is pushed through the soft metal. producing a furrow. The displaced curl of metal which has been cut from the plate is removed with a scraper. The plate is inked, wiped and printed under heavy pressure. This method yields a quality of austere precision but shading and tone may be achieved through crosshatching. Albrecht Durer, who lived from 1471-1528, was a master engraver.

Drypoint: A thin steel-tipped tool, held like a pencil is used to scratch the design directly onto the surface of the plate. The rough ridge of copper or zinc which is displaced and thrown up beside the furrow is called the burr. It retains the ink. along with the furrow when the plate is wiped, and when printed yields a rich velvety effect. Lines can be drawn more freely than in engraving, but not as freely as in etching due to the resistance of the metal to the needle. Since it can be worked quickly and directly, it is ideal for on the spot sketches. Whistler, who lived from 1874-1903, created beautiful drypoints.

Etching: Here the incisions are made chemically using acid rather than mechanically, or by hand. The surface of the plate is covered with a beeswax-like acid resistant material called the ground. The ground is removed when drawing with an etching needle so that the metal is exposed. The plate is the immersed in an acid which bites away at the exposed metal. yielding a series of lines incised into the surface. Many master painters were also etchers, including Rembrandt, Picasso, Rubens, Goya and Turner, to name a few.

Mezzotint: This is a method of engraving in tone where the surface of the plate is systematically roughened with a tool called a rocker. The rows of indentations which lie close together produce a black impression when inked. The image is worked out of the roughened surface with a scraper and then the light soft tones are produced out of the black background by polishing with a burnisher. Dark velvet prints are produced with bright highlights.

Aquatint: This is a tonal process developed in the eighteenth century which uses acid to reproduce the effect of water colour washes. The plate is dusted with a resin powder. It is then heated on a hot plate and, upon melting, each particle of the coating becomes an acid resistant dot. The aquatint is bitten like an etching. The longer the acid is allowed to bite, the darker these areas will show in the print. Tonal variation is obtained by interrupting the etching process and stopping out with lacquer those areas in which a lighter tone is required. The plate can continue to be bitten for the darker tones. This same stopping out and stepping of the acid bits is also used to produce lighter and darker lines in etching.

Wiping a plate with my faithful old etching press in the background.

MY FIRST SERIOUS ENCOUNTER with printmaking occurred many years ago. After graduating from Sheridan College, I enrolled as an extension student at Erindale College, in order to use the etching studio there. It was an opportunity to explore a new printmaking medium - demanding, unforgiving and, for a person as undisciplined as I, absolutely fascinating. I became completely engrossed.

I immersed myself in books on etching, and experimented with recipes for acid solutions taken from 300 year old manuscripts. I experienced, first hand, the complex chemistry involved and, on more than one occasion, unwittingly filled my studio with a noxious green gas, forcing me to evacuate the premises. But I was learning.

Eventually, I set up a studio on some wilderness acreage just south of Algonquin Park, and began to devote myself, full time, to my art. My early intaglio prints were line etchings of the landscape which surrounded me. Being away from the bustle of the city kindled my love of natural areas and allowed me to develop my own artistic voice, without outside influence. I experimented with various etching techniques, including aquatint, drypoint, and engraving. I began to use a camera to record details for later use in the studio. I set up a darkroom and learned to transfer images to the etching plate using high contrast film and photographic emulsions. It was inevitable that the potential to combine both traditional and innovative photographic techniques in my work would become irresistible. A new world of possibilities had opened.

Although black and white photography remains the basis for my etchings, with time I began to incorporate colour into my work as well, allowing me to be more specific in terms of expressing my reaction to the land. The use of loose, transparent water colour adds an impressionistic dimension to the work - a quality reminiscent of an old hand tinted photograph. Representational, yet personal, and ever so slightly askew.

Recently, I began to incorporate computer technology in an effort to find new and exciting ways of manipulating my photographic images, and to streamline the process of creating my etching plates. Not only does this open up a whole new range of artistic possibilities, but it also saves me from the potentially toxic effects of darkroom chemical fumes and the antics of attempting to hand develop large, unwieldy sheets of litho film. The potential is limitless, exhilarating, overwhelming. I find it truly ironic that I am able to seamlessly merge such traditional techniques as etching and aquatinting with innovative computer technology to produce my artwork.

Despite the constant changes in technique, and the challenges of intaglio printmaking, my excitement at pulling the first print of a new work has not diminished over the years. Nor has my love for the medium itself. I chose it for what it has to say, and not for the potential it has for making multiples. To pull just one fine print from each plate, then move on to the next - that would be ideal.

I was wandering through an exhibition of my work recently and appreciated the thread that ties the works together. My images are not unique and spectacular landforms, but rather bits and pieces of a familiar landscape that is etched in our psyche. There is a sense of peace and solace within my original landscape etchings, of mystery and primal longings. They are the familiar remains of what we have experienced and have increasingly grown distant to. My images portray natural areas which we desperately need in order to know ourselves, and they are a celebration of our natural heritage.

- top -