Etching, An Artists’ Guide

Abstract

Printmaking is an exciting art field, continually evolving and assimilating new technologies. Etching conversely (if defined as scratching and corroding with acid into a metal plate an image from which an edition of multiples can be made) can seem curiously static and old fashioned, especially to emerging artists and younger printmakers who usually enter a university etching department confronted with huge black Victorian machinery and a rigid lists of timings, pressures, measurements and rules. As an etcher myself, and having spent hours selling teenage Art Foundation students on a process dependent on an apparently unchanging technology, I read with genuine interest to see what could be written about etching that was refreshing and new.