What is Relief Etching?
The essential difference between relief etching and other forms of printing from a thin piece of copper is that instead of working the ink into the marks etched into the metal plate, as in intaglio, the ink is rolled over the surface of the plate avoiding the etched areas altogether.

I came across the technique when I became interested in William Blake who has been the most famous practitioner of it. In his day the chemicals used would have been far, far more toxic, the etching times much longer, the working conditions more cramped, and the likely hood of the image spoiling much greater.

Apart from this my technique differs from Blakes in one other very important respect. He started with a blank piece of copper and painted the image on, essentially working from white to black. I start with a wax ground on the plate and draw the image into the ground, black to white.

The following instructions are intended to give a general idea of how the technique works to someone who is not that familiar with printing jargon.

Relief Etching instructions.

1. Take an 18 gauge piece of copper cut to size.

2. De-grease the best side of the copper. This is because grease, such as that which is produced on your hands, acts as a barrier between the acid and the metal. If the plate were not de-greased there is a strong chance the image would be spoiled.

3. Place the copper onto a heated metal surface (the "hot plate"). This heats your piece of copper so that you can melt the "hard ground" wax onto it. When the wax has been applied a roller is used to spread it around and to reduce it to a thin film, completely covering the surface of the copper. The copper is then removed from the heated surface to cool down.

4. Turning the plate upside down lighted tapers are wafted underneath the copper plate so that the smoke blackens the wax further. This is to provide a surface black enough so that any scratches made during drawing show up easily.

5. The image is drawn into the wax using a sharp point such as an ink pen nib.

6. The other side of the copper is coated with "stop out" varnish. This prevents the acid from etching the undrawn side.

7. The copper is immerse totally in Ferric Chloride for a few hours. To start with I immersed the plates for a long time but I have since found out that this was for much longer than necessary.

8. The copper is removed from the acid and all substances cleaned off. The etched surface of the plate will now look like fig.1. i.e. very corroded.

9. To print ink is rolled over the surface of the etched side.

10. This inked plate is run through a printing press with a piece of paper. And voila this creates the print.

Fig. 2 shows the printed plate however it has been through the press twice, the first time with the reverse rolled in blue to create a blue background and the second time with black on the etched side.

This example was one of 12 sections of the print Tonka.