Grounds For Texture
The featured Profile 1 is an etching with hard ground drawing and soft ground background. The hard ground is a denser resist to the acid and holds a line drawing clean. Soft ground is pliable so textures can be impressed easily and leave a soft edge when bitten in the acid. The background in Profile 1 was created with a coffee ground slurry painted on and left to dry, then placed in the acid bath and allowed to lift off in intervals. Creating both soft and deep tones at once. There is no end to creative mark making in all the printmaking processes. The following are other examples of combining hard and soft grounds:
More about the plate processing below,
I hope you find these insights to the creative process interesting
"Waiting For Spring is a drawing into hard ground on a copper plate with washes of the acid over the background after the lines were bitten in the acid. This gives some roughness to that plate area to catch ink for slight softer tones.
"Woolie" is a drawing into hard ground on a copper plate that is inked and wiped lightly leaving some "plate tone" on his woolly-ness. Then a second wipe for highlights in the wool and horn.
Man With Pillow, has a stepped aquatint background made with rosin applied to the plate after the line drawing was bitten in the acid bath. The line drawing has to be covered with an acid resist when the aquatint area is bitten in the acid and lifted several times to build the gradation in the background.
Shasi Come is an aquatint and line drawing on a zinc plate. The figure was made with white ground, a soft ground thinned to different viscosities and painted on in layers. A slow and very calculated process. The thinnest layers will lift off the plate first as it sits in the acid bath. The thickest layers will lift last resulting in the least affect of the acid thus holding less ink when printed.
Hay Bales has both hard and soft ground applied to the plate. Hard ground is for fine lines and detail, soft ground is more pliable and can be smudged, or impressed with textures, or brushed with a stiff brush exposing the metal with the brush stroke as the background clouds were handled.
Peonies in Ribbon Vase is 2 plates, the background plate has no etching just ink rolled as a monoprint and the peonies are hard ground lines and stenciled ink ribbons.