Conclusion to Adventures with Giorgio Morandi

Last week I shared a quick study on the printmaker/painter Giorgio Morandi. Since then, it's been something of a crosshatching party, culminating in yet another acid etched plate. This time we used a combination of drypoint and acid etching, using hard ground as a resist.

 

 (The only time I have to draw is when I'm hanging out in the lab, waiting for assays to run. Hence, the subject matter)

Methodology after the cut

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First, I painted a layer of liquid hard ground over a blank plate. Hard ground is essentially a black resin dissolved in turpentine- I'd say it's a dead ringer for love potion no. 9.

Once the turpentine evaporated, I was left with a smooth layer of dark resin covering the naked surface of the zinc plate. Using my sketch (see below) as a guide, I used a scribe to score tiny lines in the hard ground, exposing the metal underneath. Compared to drypoint etching, where the hard touch required to physically scratch the surface of the metal is finger-cramp inducing, this was easy.

After laying down an initial layer of cross hatching, I placed the plate in a 6:1 nitric acid bath for about 8 minutes. The acid did not touch the areas where the resin hard ground lay undisturbed, instead eating away at the exposed portions of the plates. In this way, the acid was doing all the hard work for me.

Post-etching, I cleaned off the hard ground and spread a layer of ink onto the plate, then wiped as much of it off as I could. The ink stayed in the little grooves, and rubbed easily off the unetched areas. Once I put the plate with the receiving paper positioned on top of it through the printing press, I peeled off this print. 

Not impressed with the contrast, I decided to go for another application of crosshatches.

Once again: layer on hardground, wait to dry. Using vertical and horizontal lines this time, I added texture to the background and a few other select areas, thereby increasing the black value. Tada! you've already seen the finished product, up top. Here is the plate itself, muzzy and shadowed.

Below is the concept sketch, plus a couple other attempts at the Morandi technique. You may notice that  I have a very hard time avoiding circumscribing outlines...
(all done with ballpoint pen)

 

I wish I had been able to get this kind of contrast on the plate, but the technique is not great for deep blacks. 

 

(Tomatoes included in previous post- here for the sake of completion)

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Next up, ink studies on Van Gogh, Goya, and various other printmaking masters. Oh yeah.