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Name: Olivia Branscum
Date and Time:
Location: Chandler 260
Subject: Engraving
Materials:
1 copper plate, 4x6 inches (K&S Metals, from Making & Knowing Lab)
Goddard’s Brass & Copper Polish (Making & Knowing Lab)
Newsprint (Making & Knowing Lab)
Newspaper (Making & Knowing Lab)
Burin (Making & Knowing)
Scraper (Making & Knowing)
1200-grade sandpaper (Making & Knowing)
Drypoint needle (Making & Knowing)
Black printmaking ink (M&K)
I began the engraving process today by polishing my copper plate. The copper and zinc polish has an incredibly pungent, initially off-putting smell. I wonder – how would early modern practitioners have prepared their engraving surfaces? At first, the copper plate seemed to take forever to polish; per Ad Stijnman’s instructions, we were all looking to see our eyelashes reflected in the surface of the plate. It soon became clear – to me, anyway – that the surface of the plate was not going to become mirror-like, at least not from my direct line of sight. I did notice that other people’s plates looked extremely glassy and smooth from an angle; upon looking at the surface of the plate in such a way that the line of one’s gaze ran perpendicular to the plate itself, the imperfections of each plate became more visible.
I polished for about 15 minutes before realizing that I could see my eyelashes in the plate’s surface, even if they didn’t appear to be perfectly individuated (as I had assumed from the instructions we received). I set it aside in the lab in its cardboard packaging to await tomorrow’s trip to the lab.
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| Polished copper plate in packaging |
Name: Olivia Branscum
Date and Time:
Location: Chandler 260
Subject: Engraving
Today, I came in for extra lab hours to learn how to engrave from Ad. While I was waiting for him to finish working with another group of students, I polished my zinc plate under Naomi’s supervision. Because of the number of people in the lab, I wasn’t able to start my engraving lesson, and had to leave before ground could be applied to my etching plate. I’ll return tomorrow to begin engraving and apply ground to the plate.
Name: Olivia Branscum
Date and Time:
Location: Chandler 260
Subject: Engraving
Today was my long(er) extra day in the lab. Upon arriving, I gridded the provided skillbuilding design on my plate with a drypoint needle; Ad told me it wasn’t necessary to mark out each line in the design. I didn’t understand what he meant at first, but as I worked, I realized that the guidelines could be distracting – sometimes, trying to pay attention to them caused me to lose focus and break the line I was trying to engrave. Sometimes, I’ve noticed, I get in my own way by over-planning and -structuring my execution of any given process. This turns out to be paralyzing, because until one has experimented with specific materials and implements, it’s impossible to conceptualize the best approach to carrying out general instructions; when I’ve assumed too much about how the process will work in advance, I set unrealistic goals for myself that hold me back from ‘getting my hands dirty’ and finding intuitive ways to execute instructions ‘in collaboration with’ the materials.
I sat down next to Ad with my drypoint needle, plate, and burin. My first real challenge came when I had to learn how to hold the burin. It took me a good 15 seconds to configure my fingers properly so as to be able to hold the burin securely with minimal digital interference between the burin and the plate. At first, the burin felt strange in my hand; I felt like I had no control over it and would never be able to direct it effectively. Eventually, I wiggled my hand into a position that Ad deemed appropriate (though, I confess, at first I did not understand what had changed between my initial attempts and the configuration I landed on). Then, it was time to make a mark! Ad instructed me to place the tip of the burin on the plate at about a 45-degree angle, then slowly lower it until it was nearly parallel to the plate while simultaneously applying pressure and moving the burin ‘forward,’ away from myself, along the arc of the design (which, in this case, was fortunately just a series of lines).
My first five or so attempts were ‘failures’ in the sense that I could not achieve that ‘give’ of the tip of the burin catching on the copper at the appropriate depth/angle with the right amount of pressure. It turned out, I think, that I had not been keeping the fingers of my right hand out of the burin’s way – they kept the blade jabbing at the plate at too high of an angle. When I completely gave up the ghost of holding the burin in such a way as to maintain what I thought was control over it, I was suddenly able to engrave. This moment brought comprehension of what Ad had been trying to achieve earlier when he corrected the technique of my burin grip.
From that point on, I felt like I had a solid grasp of the technique of drawing straight lines. I moved quickly through each new exercise, and felt good about the process. It was actually quite meditative and relaxing, and it was rewarding to see the curls of copper proceeding from the plate. As in the linocut process, I found my hands and arm tensing up a bit; I have a definite tendency to hunch over the plate while working on it, which Ad reminded me makes things much harder than they need to be. Celine and I were getting simultaneous instructions from Ad. At one point, I tried resting my plate on a washcloth instead of a paper towel, but I found a paper towel to be more effective as a plate; I felt as though it afforded me more control over the plate (which I had to secure with my left hand). Ad had to go eat lunch, but showed Celine and me how to engrave curved lines before he left.
Shortly after Ad left, I turned to curved lines because I was feeling confident after my experience learning how to engrave straight lines. I found that I was not really ready to engrave curved lines; I think I lacked sufficient control over the pressure exerted on the burin while simultaneously turning the plate to create a curve. This amounted to a situation where the burin kept ‘skipping’ across the plate, making my curves jerky and piecemeal instead of smooth and continuous. After engraving two ‘circles’ and two ‘spirals’ (rendered in scare quotes because they were incredibly angular in reality), I returned to the cross-hatching squares on the plate. When Ad came back from lunch, he told me that it would probably have been better to wait until the very end to attempt the curved lines, as they are a more advanced skill. I decided to try to return to them later. By now, it was time to apply etching ground to my polished zinc plate: we would not get another opportunity to do so before etching the plates in class the following Monday. (link to etching field notes) I packed up my copper plate, checked out a burin, and grabbed my polished zinc plate to begin to apply the ground. I took photos for Nancy; Min took photos for me.
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Detail of engraved line work
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Detail of engraved line work with copper curl |
Name: Olivia Branscum
Date and Time:
Location: 530 Riverside Drive, Apt 3C
Subject: Engraving
Today, I finished engraving the given skillbuilding design and added my own design to the plate. My design was inspired by an Art Deco-style image that I found while doing research online. I chose to model my design after an Art Deco image because the relatively rigid lines seemed like a better fit for the engraving process than etching. I still encountered some difficulty with the curved lines, but was able to render the design. I wrapped my plate back up to bring into the printmaking workshop tomorrow.
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Detail of personal engraved design
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Name: Olivia Branscum
Date and Time:
Location: Teacher’s College print studio
Subject: Engraving - printing!
We made impressions at the print studio today! I started with my etching plate (see link), and after one fairly successful print, decided to turn to my copper plate. I had to sand, polish, and bevel the edges of my copper plate before it could be printed. I used 1200-grade sandpaper with a little bit of water to get rid of the burs, then added some copper/zinc polish. Finally, I used a scraper tool to bevel the edges of the plate and 1000-grade sandpaper to wear down the corners.
I then inked my plate using a spatula, spread it over the plate with a cardboard spreader, used newsprint to pat off the excess ink, wiped the ink with a lint-free cloth, and used fresh newsprint to wipe the plate clean. After receiving the go-ahead from Ad, I wiped down the edges of the plate, placed it on fresh newsprint, removed my gloves, and dropped it onto a piece of newsprint on the intaglio press. The pressure level was set to zinc, but we decided to go ahead and run my copper plate through anyway. I chose to use handmade paper for this impression; I wasn’t terribly confident in the quality of my plate, and had heard that the handmade paper was yielding slightly fainter impressions than the watercolor paper was doing. I placed the paper face up on top of my plate, then positioned a piece of newsprint on top of it before gently folding the felt guard down on top of the plates and using the wheel on the press to advance my plate through the rollers.
After running the plate through the press, I lifted up the felt, removed the top piece of newsprint, and checked my impression. While the impression was successful, it was rather faint; Ad and I determined that in addition to the factors possibly introduced by the handmade paper, I may have produced relatively shallow lines since I was not quite comfortable with the engraving technique.
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Impression of personal engraved design
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