25. Precautions to be observed while Drawing.—Before you begin to draw you must trace the margin of your design, for the guidance of the printer. To protect your plate, it will be necessary to cover it with very soft paper; the pressure of the hand does no harm, provided you avoid rubbing the varnish. If you should happen to damage it, you must close up the brilliant little dots which you will observe, by touching them up, very lightly and with a very fine brush, with stopping-out varnish.
26. Directions for Drawing with the Needle.—I might now let you copy some very simple etching; but your knowledge of drawing will, I believe, enable you to try your hand at a somewhat more important exercise. Let us suppose, then, that you are to draw a landscape, although the practice you are about to acquire applies to all other subjects equally well. Will you reproduce this design by Claude Lorrain? ([Pl. II.]) It is a composition full of charm and color, and very harmonious in effect. Use only one needle, and keep your work close together in the distance and more open in the foreground. (See [Pl. Ia.]) That appears paradoxical to you; but the nitric acid will soon tell you why this is so. I shall indicate to you, after your plate has been bitten, those cases in which you will have to proceed differently, or, in other words, in which you will have to draw your lines nearer together or farther apart without regard to the different distances. I cannot explain this subject more fully before you have become acquainted with the process of biting in, as without this knowledge it must remain unintelligible to you. This remark holds good, also, of what I have told you on the subject of the needles of different degrees of sharpness.
“It is curious, my dear sir, to notice how at one and the same time the point combines a certain degree of softness and of precision; those who draw with the pen ought also to be admirers of etching. It seems to me, however, that my lines are too thick; I have already laid several of them, and the varnish is no longer visible; I am afraid I have taken it up altogether.”
You need not feel any uneasiness about that; it is simply owing to the irradiation of the copper, the brilliancy of which the screen does not completely subdue. The bright line is made to look broader than it really is by the brilliant gloss of the metal. But if you lay a piece of tracing-paper on the plate you will see the lines as they really are; that is to say, with plenty of space between them. By the aid of a lens you can convince yourself still more easily; you will often have occasion to avail yourself of this instrument to enable you to do fine work with greater facility, or to give you a better insight into what you have already done.
As the irradiation of which we have just spoken is apt to deceive us in regard to the quantity of the work done, we may happen to find less of it than we expected when the plate has been bitten. Plates which to the beginner seem to be quite elaborately worked, present to the acid lines widely spaced and insufficient in number, thus necessitating retouches. It is essential, therefore, in principle (except in the special cases to be pointed out hereafter), to give to our work, in its first stages, all the development that is necessary.
I forgot to tell you that you must provide yourself with a very soft brush, say a badger, which, from time to time, you must pass lightly over your plate so as to remove the small particles of varnish raised by the needle. Otherwise you will not be able to see properly what you have been doing.
Continue, and follow your own feeling; work away without fear of going wrong; some of your errors you will be able to remedy. Thus, if you have made a mistake, you can lay a thin coat of liquid varnish over the spoiled part by means of a brush; in a few seconds the varnish will have dried, and you can make your correction. You can employ this method for the correction of a faulty line, or to restore a place which should have remained white, but which you have inadvertently shaded.
Here I shall stop for the present, and shall close by saying, May good luck attend your point, as well as your acid! There is nothing more to be said to you until after your plate has been bitten.