If You'd Only Clapped Your Hands Hard Enough

I think it was a character in a Jules Feiffer play that had this monologue about how when she was a girl watching Peter Pan there was an incident when Peter was trying to work with the kids in the audience to clap really, really hard to revive Tinkerbell after some great drain on the magic in children's hearts or something. Peter was running around frantically, yelling to get the kids to clap, and they clapped their hearts out, but Peter checked and it wasn't enough. . . Tinkerbell was dead. That's how I'm starting to feel about green printmaking. Oh, I don't want to. I'm clapping my heart out. It is not part of the great plot that the good thing to do won't work, but my, is Tink looking green-and not in a good way. Which is to say, I am invested in this working-so any help anyone can give me-I promise will be turned out to the greater good-like fairy dust. (Did I see her eyes flutter?)

I've put up a couple of test plates comparing Future floor wax and Lascaux hard ground as grounding on copper plates. I've been using the Future (as in Keith Howard's method) for a couple of years now and it has worked-flaked off badly (thick, brittle lines) at the edges (yes, despite copious degreasing), but worked. The edges issue has just been a bear, though, as I've been spending hours scraping and burnishing, so I've been very excited about trying the Lascaux hard ground-so much so that I invested in the full line of their products.

I really want these products to work, so if anybody out there has an idea of what I am doing wrong, please enlighten me! What I've found so far with Lascaux leaves me a bit disheartened. First off, I find that I cannot draw through the hard ground with the blackener on it-the needle sticks and jerks. Now, it may be the brush I use to apply the ground, but as it is a good quality flat brush, that is hard to imagine. And the stop out, which you are supposed to be able to draw through, well-if you want a slug of a line through it, you can. Also, the soft ground is not sensitive enough to work in the traditional way (drawing on paper laid on the plate). I followed the directions on the web, but found large chunks of the soft ground peeling up as I removed the drawing. So I waited (you can treat it like a hard ground after the open working time) and it drew through beautifully (though really hard to see the lines-clear film over copper), as I stopped out and lined in the missing part of the drawing. Well, the lines drawn in later, like hard ground, came out beautifully-the soft ground disappeared utterly. Help! In exasperation this afternoon after this final disappointment, I stalked out to the little red house out back to ground a plate with (gasp!) an asphaltum hard ground. It felt really good. People, I want to be green. But its not easy. Not without lots of help, not without community. Hell, even with the deadly toxic stuff you need lots of help. Oh, for an apprenticeship that would work with a toddler in tow.

As for help! There is a great forum I've found at Graphic Chemical where Dean Clark, Carol Robertson and other printers out there share their experience and advise on printing matters. Dean Clarks answers on the forum verge on poetry, and he has a blog I've linked to on this page. Robertson has put out a book : "Intaglio: Acrylic-Resist Etching, Collagraphy, Engraving, Drypoint, Mezzotint" that I've ordered off of Amazon and am very excited about.