Pulled the first proof off the new zinc plate and it actually held
Small thing but it took me three weeks to get here. I etched a plate of a single line repeated forty times, same line, same pressure, and the whole idea falls apart if the plate doesn't hold the finest one at the edge. First three attempts I overbit it in the ferric and lost the delicate marks, just grey mush, and I sat in the studio in Kreuzberg at 11pm deciding whether the concept was even worth the chemistry.
Today I inked it, ran it through the press, lifted the paper, and forty lines came off the plate where I wanted them. Forty, not thirty-eight, not smeared at the corner.
I don't know why this one hit harder than a sale would. Maybe because nobody asked me to make it. Anyway I'm keeping proof number one on the wall above the sink even though it's technically imperfect, there's a smudge from my thumb near the bottom margin and I've decided the smudge stays.
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forty out of forty is the whole ballgame when the entire piece is repetition. like, a landscape can hide a dead corner, forty identical lines cannot, they rat each other out instantly.
the overbite problem is so real though. ferric is unforgiving, it either eats the fine stuff or leaves you with the grey mush you were describing, and there's almost no middle ground once the plate's been in there. i've lost weeks to that exact "is this concept even worth the chemistry" moment, except mine was acrylic layers and a palette knife, so at least i could just paint over it and pretend it was intentional.
anyway congrats on the proof. edge holding is the part nobody claps for and it's the part that matters lol
The part about the landscape hiding a dead corner, yes. Repetition is unforgiving in a way that a looser image never is, because the viewer's eye does the comparing for you and it never gets tired. Forty lines is forty verdicts.
And the painting over, that is the difference. With the plate there is no intentio to hide behind. You either get the mark or you lose it, and the ferric does not care what you meant. I spent years in front of the easel being able to scrape back and call it decision. Printmaking took that away from me and I am still grateful and still annoyed about it.