Shades of White and Cream

In my first etching class, I believe I was told about three etching papers-Rives BFK, Arches, and I can't remember the other one-I think it was one of the student grade papers. This was sometime around 1990 or so, and just this week I get around to doing a side by side caparison of most of the papers that I have frequently used or those that have piqued my interest over the years. As I mentioned earlier, I have quite a back up of completed prints that need editioned and this comparison has been a long time coming. I want to find the best sheet for my imagery. I generally use dense aquatints, and the plates are heavily worked. I ordered the sample book from Graphic Chemical, then several larger sheets of the most promising candidates and those not represented in the sample book.

Part of this experiment stems from Tim Berry at SFAI, who highly recommended I go with cream or off white papers to enhance the richness of blacks and bring out the highlights. I think he is absolutely right, but I got into a BFK Cream rut. I've been using primarily BFK Cream and Somerset over the past five years or so, until my recent refresher course at PNCA with Michael Southern, who turned me on to Fabriano Rosapina.

So I printed the same small image on the following: Hahnemuhle Copperplate Warm White, Magnani Pascia Soft White, Johannot, Sommerset Velvet Antique, Sommerset Velvet Soft White, Rives BFK White, Rives BFK Cream, Fabriano Rosapina White, Fabriano Rosapina Cream, and Copperplate Zerkall. The results are difficult to draw 100 percent conclusions from, because I have to account for the possibility of uneven wiping from plate to plate, but for my purposes, the favorites are Somerset Velvet Soft White and Hahnemuhle Copperplate Warm White. Really, it confirms the fact that the slighly off whites work best for me, and I love the warmth of these two. Pescia is delightful, too. And I am enamoured still of the Rosapina, especially for line engravings. If anyone knows of papers I should add to this experiment list, I would love to hear suggestions. Somehow I skipped over German Etching, Arches, and. . .

I'm not sure I understand the Zerkall. I printed them all at the same pressure, and that is the only paper that seemed brittle around the plate mark. There really were no "bad" papers, but the Rives BFK white was the least favorite for my work. It is the paper I cut my teeth on, too, but I read on the Inkterraction discussion that the formula was changed in recent years, so maybe it is different from (twenty!) years ago. Conversly, I have used Rives BFK cream, per Tim Berry's advice, and continue to love it, though it is too dark for some of the work. . . maybe.

Hard decisions. But what interested me most about this experiment was cutting largeish, equal sized pieces of these papers and seeing them side by side. The colors were as varied as Martha Stewart's eggs. Gorgeous array. Reminded me of that old art school exercise of painting a picture of "white" eggs. There is no white, only shades of white. Now for testing the blacks and Japan papers for chine colle-