"Who is so patient as he who will willingly wait for thee."

The Story

If Walls Could Speak. Walls and ceilings are often textured before painting to give them character. I often stare at these textures and see shapes, characters, and stories. One night before getting into bed I was laying on the bedroom floor talking to my wife. I laid there staring at the ceiling. In the texture of the ceiling I saw a figure sitting on a stool with his hands in his pockets, waiting. I wondered what he was waiting for. I waited. He waited.

As I examined his surroundings, I saw he was in a barren environment, as many others I see. One lone tree on the horizon was all that accompanied him. I waited. When my patience ran out I could see that Patience had killed him.

I quickly grabbed my sketchbook and drew what I saw. A few weeks later his story was cut into a copper plate and printed.

The Process

Hard Ground Etching and Aquatint on a Copper Plate. An etching is quite simple. A portion of the plate is masked with some sort of material while the rest is exposed. The plate is then lowered into acid, which eats away at the exposed surface while the masked surface is protected. This is very similar to masking a painting.

There are generally two kinds of material to use to mask a copper plate; soft ground and hard ground wax. Soft ground wax is soft when cool and can be manipulated very easily. See Plateau of Despair. Hard ground wax is more stubborn and requires more force to remove.

Hard Ground Etching. To begin the etching process, the plate must first be cleaned to remove all oil and grease. This allows the ground to adhere correctly, removing unwanted etching problems. Contact paper is attached to the back side of the plate because nothing should be etched on that side, and etching will ruin the plate if the entire surface is etched. After the plate is clean it is heated. A little ground is melted and rolled over the entire face of the plate, evenly.

When the plate is cool work can begin. With hard ground a solid, pointed object is required to remove material (eg. pencil, scribe, etc). Using the sketch as a guide, the linework the art is scratched into the ground (this is what needs to be exposed because ink is printed from the cuts in the Intaglio process).

Once the mask is finished and acceptable it is lowered into an acid tank for a certain amount of time. Time varies based on the type of acid and the desired intensity of the lines.

Aquatint Etching. After the hard ground etching is complete an aquatint is added. Rosin dust is shaken in a box, the plate is inserted and the dust is allowed to settle for a small time. The plate is quickly removed and heated to melt the rosin dust to the surface. The rosin dust creates a dot pattern mask.

A dot pattern allows the printing of large areas of color. It is then etched, masked, etched, masked, etc. masking the areas that will be lighter, etching the areas that will be darker. Repeating this several times will create areas with light etching (which will be light in ink intensity) and areas of dark color (deeper cuts which hold more ink).

The final result is a line art image (from the hard ground) with varying levels of gray and black providing contrast (from the aquatint).