ZINC PLATES.—Experiments may be made in zinc plates. The cut above was traced from the Grasset cut given with Chapter III, Part I. Between the tracing {235} paper and the zinc, typewriting carbon paper was laid. The tracing was gone over with a hard pencil; the design was thus transferred to the zinc. The lines were then covered with asphaltum (which is the same as bitumen), bought in a tube at a paint store. Any colored oil paint or varnish or transfer ink will do, as its use is simply to hold the dragon’s blood. It may be thinned with turpentine so that it will flow easily from the brush. While the asphaltum was still wet, the plate was dusted with dragon’s blood, which was put in a coarse linen rag and held like a bag over the plate by the right hand; the left hand tapping the right made the powder fall evenly over the plate. Do this carefully for practice in order to learn to powder a plate evenly for a stipple tint (see farther on); the dragon’s blood may be dumped on the plate. The plate was then dusted off with a camel’s-hair brush, which removed the dragon’s blood from the plate except where bitumen held it. The plate was then held over a flame till the dragon’s blood turned black; it was then immersed in an acid bath, about ninety per cent water and ten per cent nitric acid. The vessel (an old baking pan painted with asphaltum) holding the bath was rocked from time to time. The dragon’s blood served as a stopping-out varnish. The acid will eat away the plate where it is not protected by dragon’s blood. After five or ten minutes, when the acid seemed to be eating into the stopping-out varnish, the plate was taken out, washed and dried, and again dusted with dragon’s blood. (In using a large plate, of course, it would be easier to roll it up with lithographic transfer ink.) A second and third etching reduced the background, so {236} that a proof was taken. For printing in this book the plate has been routed. The ragged edge is due to our ’prentice hand; this is our second experiment, but a little practice, we are certain, would bring more satisfactory results. The Pan lettering is copied from the title-page by Stuck, given in Chapter II, Part II, page [171].
Copy of lettering by Stuck. Etched on copper without the assistance of photography.
It is produced as was the Grasset, except that it was etched on copper and required more bitings than the zinc.
Designs for this process should not be drawn in fine lines like Engström’s portrait of himself, but should be heavy like his portrait of “Hedin” and the Molock “Crispi.” (See Chapters I and II, Part I.) When a white background is not required, the dragon’s blood dusted on the plate may be allowed to remain upon it, in which case a stipple background is the result. An ingenious experimenter can get many different results by this stipple method.
COPPERPLATE ENGRAVING.—Copperplate engraving, and etching in intaglio are not used by the typographical printer, but the printer who executes very fine work would find that he could make handsome frontispieces for limited editions, or book-plates, by either {237} of these processes. For about 25 cents one may obtain Winsor & Newton’s handbook on “The Art of Etching,” by H. R. Robertson, which will give a description of the first process.
Copperplate engraving is most difficult to master and should not be attempted by anyone who cannot
Portrait of Félicien Rops, the etcher, by P. Matlay. Half-tone from a half-tone. Showing copperplate press.
draw a sure line. A designer with a sure hand might attempt a simple book-plate. Anyone who can use the burin on wood can use it on copper, though in the latter case the pressure from the palm of the hand, which the beginner in wood engraving should avoid, {238} is used because the resistance of copper is much greater than that of wood. The first finger may be placed on top of the burin when engraving in copper, but at the side for wood cutting. We would say that the engraved line of the copperplate is one of the handsomest lines in the graphic arts.