Trying something new. Or at least different....

Let's just say it: I am in a rut. And I have been for quite a while. I'm not excited about any of the ideas I have for linocuts... they all just seem to be variations on a theme. I'm flailing around, looking for an interesting spark.

Which is why I took a complete detour a few weeks ago and finally made a little TetraPak printing experiment. A what printing, you might ask? It's an intaglio process, like etching... but not nearly so involved as working on zinc or copper with all sorts of questionable materials, because the printing plate is a piece of TetraPak. You might know it as a soup box.

Talk about a low-tech plate!

Unless you've cut open your broth box and peered into its depths, however, you might not have realized that the inside is coated with a thin layer of foil. And that foil can be scratched with a needle, as one does when making a drypoint etching. The foil is, of course, squishier than a zinc or copper or acrylic plate, but if you're not worried about precision, it's good enough!

A little song sparrow, quickly scratched in TetraPak

It's probably been... ooph... 40 years (what!?!?) since I've inked and printed an intaglio plate. Unlike relief printing, which involves rolling ink on to the surface of the plate, intaglio printing requires pushing ink down into the incised lines and then wiping off the surface. A damp sheet of paper will press down into the lines and pull up the impression. 

All of which means that I had forgotten what a mess it can be to ink and wipe an intaglio plate. I definitely need a better system. But here's the inked plate:

Test plate ready to print!

I never did get a consistent combination of inking, wiping, paper dampness, and pressure, but I did get a nice set of experiments.

TetraPak test prints

Intaglio was my first printmaking love, although I learned to make etchings using zinc plates, aquatint rosin, nitric acid baths, asphaltum varnish, kerosene.... you get the idea. It wasn't a process I could maintain without a properly ventilated studio and the capacity to manage all those questionable chemicals. 

Some years ago (decades now, no doubt) there was a lot of excitement around the newish, less toxic process of solar plate etching. I never had an opportunity to learn how to make solar plates, although what little I knew seemed a step removed from the immediacy of drawing a needle across a treated plate to create an image. 

Using TetraPak felt a little more my "style," but I definitely need more practice to achieve any sort of consistency. And the "squishiness" of the foil doesn't seem to give me the control I'd like for making marks. Still, it was nice to take an afternoon to just play around... something I don't give myself nearly enough time for.