A Treatise on Etching

by Maxime Lalanne

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 emancipate 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 attitude, 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 assure 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 scraper, 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 passing 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 Méryon 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.