Experimental mark making on lino (Part 2 : Etching)

A while ago, I attended a weekend course about lino etching at West Yorkshire Print Workshop. It was run by Jenny Thomas and Fabian Osborne who were wonderfully informative and really encouraged our creativity. I thoroughly enjoyed this course so am including notes and photographs here because it is relevant to the current area of study. 

The Lino is etched using a combination of water, caustic soda crystals and wallpaper paste. The wallpaper paste adds body to the etching mixture so that it stays where you put it. 

It is very important to wear protective clothing, gloves and eye protection when doing this because the caustic soda will eat anything organic including human tissues. Also, when mixing up the paste be prepared for the fact that the chemical reaction generates heat. The paste can be stored in a sealed glass jar for up to 4 weeks - it is at its strongest when first fixed but gradually loses its effectiveness with time. 

The caustic mixture can be painted onto the lino using a synthetic paintbrush Natural hair brushes will be destroyed by the caustic soda). How deeply the plate is etched depends on how thickly you apply the paste and how long you leave it on for.  The paste can be manipulated on the block using tools or cardboard to create designs. 

The other way to create designs is to use various substances as a resist. For example wax, electrical tape, copydex glue, or stop out varnish for traditional etching. 

I tried out several of the different ways of resisting the etch and drew quite freely on the lino plates with my chosen resist but loosely basing my designs on some of the organic shapes I'd been looking at in my small sketchbook: bacterial cultures, chordae tendinae of the heart and so on. After applying the resist and waiting for it to dry I applied a thick layer of the etching paste. As the paste etches the lino it turns from grey to brown. It usually takes about 10-15 minutes to take effects but can be left longer for a deeper etch. 

When the plate was sufficiently eaten I washed the paste off with water and a nail brush and then poured vinegar over it to neutralise the NaOH (caustic soda). 

Print from lino etched after applying a resist of melted wax using a
tjanting tool for batik

I especially enjoyed playing with the melted wax. I dripped wax onto the plate in an attempt to recall the images of bacterial colonies I had drawn in my sketchbook. I also tried drawing with the tjanting tool. The drawing was very imprecise but great fun. The wax was allowed to set solid before etching. after etching most of the wax was scraped off and then the residue was removed by ironing the plate under multiple layers of newsprint. As well as showing the design, the brush marks from the application of the paste can clearly be seen in the resulting print. 

I decided to also try a type of subtractive method with the wax. This time I painted a thick layer of wax over the plate. When this had solidified I used various tools and a scalpel to remove areas of the wax. This allowed the etch to occur only in those areas where I had removed the wax.  Some buts of wax chipped off where I had not intended but this didn't really matter because it was a completely abstract experiment. 

Print from lino etched after cutting away wax
which had been applied widely to the surface

Another way to create an interesting image , this time without any resist, is to etch the Lino multiple times in succession. Each time the etch is repeated, it becomes progressively deeper and therefore progressively lighter on the final print. In the print shown below, I have applied the etching paste to progressively smaller areas with each successive etch achieving this concentric tonal gradation. I really like this effect, it gives an illusion of three dimensions and reminds me of contour maps. It could also be exploited for tonal gradation by etching deeper in areas which are to remain lighter and less so in darker tonal areas - this would be worth experimenting with. This particular image is reminiscent of fungal cultures.

Print from lino repeatedly etched in progressively
decreasing areas

In the print below I painted stop-out varnish onto the plate as a resist in an abstract pattern inspired by mu work on the chord tendinae of the heart. While the etch was proceeding I also scratched into the surface of the etching lino using various tools. This is overprinted on a coloured background I found this one of the less successful images but it was useful for learning this technique.

Resist created using stop out varnish. texture in the etched area created
by scraping with tools during the etching. Overprinted on a coloured
background

The other technique we tried, was marbling. This involved floating stop out varnish on the surface of water (with a little wallpaper paste). Breaking up the surface tension to make the varnish break up into interesting shapes and then applying the lino plate to the surface of the water. This meant the varnish would stick to the plate. Some amazing results came from this although my pate was a little disappointing as the drops of varnish were quite small so they just gave a grainy texture to the surface as seen in the sketchbook page on the left hand side below. 

Left side: print from lino etched after applying stop out by a marbling
technique. Right side: lino etched after applying melted wax using a
tjanting tool

After preparing and proofing our plates, we experimented in printing multiple layers. We used inks that were not completely opaque in primary colours in order to allow some colour mixing and overlaying of patterns to show. Some of the results were great. The only drawback was that the lino blocks were not cut completely precisely to size so some of mine were slightly off being square. I did the best I could to align them but as you can see there are quite a lot of issues with the registration. If I were to want to display these it would be necessary to window mount them with mat board to conceal the edges.

What I learnt:

• Lino etching can be employed with a variety of resists which each give individual character to the marks made
• repeated etching on the same plate can create gradations of tone
• How to mix up caustic soda paste and how to use it and neutralise it
• Health and safety procedures for working with caustic paste
• If you plan to print in multiple layers always make sure that your plates are precisely the same size and shape before you start.