Soft ground etching

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Femme nue assise , Vernis mou by Auguste Renoir ; 1906
Landscape with the moon , Vernis mou by Wolfgang Autenrieth, 1982 with recognizable material structures (corks, grasses, towels, kitchen towel structure)
There is only one thing - say no , 'Negative' Vernis mou by Wolfgang Autenrieth with spirit carbon matrix and ballpoint pen on aquatint, 1982

The soft-ground , even soft-ground etching called, is a etching of graphical gravure printing .

technology

With soft ground etching, a wax-soft acid protection is applied to the printing plate. Structured objects can now be pressed into this “soft ground”, the surface structure of which lifts the paint off and exposes it for etching. For the drawing technique, you put a soft drawing paper on the masking varnish and draw the motif on it. The line is pressed into the soft ground. If the paper is then removed, the acid protection is lifted from the plate at the pressure points, the plate is now etched with nitric acid (for zinc plates) or iron (III) chloride (for copper plates). The result is a soft, painterly stroke. Both the character of the pen and the grain of the paper are retained in the print.

The Swiss Dietrich Meyer is said to have been the first to start adding grease to the hard caustic base around 1620. Félicien Rops rediscovered and revived this technique around 1860. Soft ground etchings also enable textile structures to be rubbed off or pressed through. This was practiced by Käthe Kollwitz , for example .

A variant was developed by Wolfgang Autenrieth. If a transfer paper is prepared with an easily removable masking varnish, it will peel off as you draw and will adhere to the plate underneath, prepared with aquatint. In this process he used matrices from the hectography as a masking varnish. Because the areas that remain light are drawn, as in the photographic negative, he calls the process negative soft ground etching .

Features of a soft ground etch

  • In contrast to drypoint , prints from the printing plate do not show any ridges and no sharp lines that taper or taper off.
  • The etched line is usually equally strong and shows rough, somewhat grainy edges. It's clearer and more even than drypoint.
  • Two-dimensional representations are only possible in combination with an aquatint or by using finely structured materials when lifting the cover layer (e.g. by laying on and rubbing over fabric or structured paper).

literature

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See also