Re: obscurification

Murray Leshner writes:
> Thanks to the person who reminded me about the spitbite.org (that
> still sounds nasty) info page.

One of the problems with copper plate etching at its most basic is
that it's really about making lines; outlines, hatches, stipples.
Hard to do things that are painterly, nebulous, or with a wide
variety of tonal range.

A number of techniques evolved to address this: soft ground, aquatint,
soap or white ground, spitbite. Spitbite literally refers to mixing
saliva with acid in order to give the acid some viscosity so that
it can be brushed onto the copperplate with painterly control.
"Bite" is a commonly used printmaking term to describe the effects
of acid on a copper or zinc plate. It's a striking effect, and
only nasty if you make the mistake of moistening the brush in your
mouth after it's already been charged with the saliva/acid mixture.

A long time ago, I registered a number of printmaking-related domain
names. When I inherited the list, I thought I'd enable one of
those, and given the interpersonal communication characteristics
of SOME LISTS, I was amused by other interpretations people might
project onto the term "spitbite".

--Eric

P.S. Crown Point Press has just released some new Nathan Oliveira
prints that make use of spitbite and other of these printmaking
techniques. I think I will go look at them this afternoon on my
way to work.

http://www.crownpoint.com/artists/oliveira

P.P.S. Crown Point is also about to release a new book in their
Magical Secrets series on these types of techniques (but, lordy,
their website takes this to another level with the typo "spite
bite"!

http://crownpointpress.stores.yahoo.net/maseseandiof.html
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Received on Sat Feb 23 11:35:03 2008