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About the artist's own techniques
Etching / mixed intaglio
It was the writer Garrison Keillor who commented on the marvellous works we could do if we didn’t have to begin it but could start somewhere in the middle. When I arrive at a fundamentally good idea I frequently find that it is some weeks before the idea begins to bear fruit. This usually happens after several variations on the initial idea. I find this method of working a healthy one as long as I am prepared to do the necessary editing, discarding the lesser pieces as part of the process. As these lesser pieces usually come at the beginning of a series I find that in some ways I am indeed starting in the middle as this is when the most satisfying works appear.
I became addicted to intaglio printmaking almost thirty years ago after realising that a metal plate can be etched, scored, scraped drilled, hammered, ground down, burnished, polished and distressed in a wide variety of ways and still print the resulting marks onto a sheet of paper.
Until around 1990 I used steel plates (a harder metal than the traditional copper plates) for fear of reducing it to a heap of shavings on the floor. Furthermore I liked to utilise the natural grain inherent in the metal which could yield some lovely textures when open bitten with a range of stronger or weaker nitric acid baths. At any stage the plate would be subjected to the rather brutal action of an electric straight grinder. This serves to pull all the various tones, textures and parts of the image together whilst polishing off the slightly grainy surface of the steel to a mirror finish if desired.
In 1990 I started to use copper plates for both my own work and for the editioning projects at the Glasgow Print Studio. This was partly prompted by the amount of grinding and polishing I was having to do by way of preparing steel plates for the artists’ editioning and co-publishing projects. My love of copper was fulfilled when in 1992 I started making mezzotints. It became a natural part of the whole intaglio process to use mezzotint in conjunction with etching either as a small part of a composite image or with etching as an integral part of the mezzotint process.
The use of photographic etching techniques (not photography) is a common element in my work and although the emphasis is on the autographic element, I enjoy the juxtaposition of the two. Such elements are quite commonplace in collage for example. But I have always felt that they acquire an even closer relationship when etched onto, and pulled from one plate.
I am also a firm believer in cognitive resonance or "the happy accident". When the process takes over, the results can be quite unpredictable. Frequently frustrating at the time, such events can work for the good for the artist who is wise enough to rise to the challenge. When events conspire and make you "do something about it" as a student of mine once put it, the whole creative experience can then start to sparkle. Consequently I have been using the backs of older plates. They are full of incidental foul bitten marks and printing them can often suggest a composition.
I always title my work simply because the title is always there. It is often the case where a phrase or word suggests a composition, dictates the content and then develops with the image to become the title.
The mezzotints
When I first started making mezzotints I foolishly though that a finer rocker would result in a more detailed mezzotint. As mezzotint was satisfying my craving to make realist works (although with a surrealist twist) I predominantly used a 100 line rocker for many of the early mezzotints. It took me quite a while to realise however, that the finer ground producing shorter burrs was responsible for much of my dissatisfaction of the lack of tonal range within the mid tones. With a shorter burr it is easier to scrape too quickly from the top (the blacks) to almost the bottom (the whites) while missing out the mid tones by failing to stop in between.
Some years ago, I was lucky to purchase from a retired mezzotint maker some fine old rockers which were made in England probably in the late1800’s. My favourite is a relatively course 35 line rocker with which I have laid some remarkably closely spaced grounds, yielding very fine detail. The secret (no secret really when I stopped to think about it) is to lay the ground with very close spaces. A pole attached to the rocker is invaluable for this. Click here to see the pole assembly. The pole also takes the strain out of rocking the plate and consequently I found it easier, though no less time consuming to prepare larger plates.
Historically the reproductive mezzotint might have been partially engraved prior to rocking. The idea being that when an area is scraped, the engraved details would appear as part of the image. These details, such as a fine black line on a paler background were perhaps impractical to try to render in mezzotint. The idea of pre etching a plate occurred to me as one of those happy accidents when I rocked a small section of a pitted etching plate. The mezzotinted image was an egg and ended up with some wonderful spots on it from the foul biting on the plate. Since then I have utilised this traditional trick by etching images such as the maps on the back wall of the mezzotint compositions.
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