My Railroad Art

I started college a little earlier in life than most. In 1972, Trenton State College (a.k.a. The College of New Jersey) began opening up a select number of credit-earning classes to high school seniors—beginning with art students. At the time, art was an escape for me; it was the only class where I wasn't ridiculed. And so I leapt at the opportunity of being out of school once a week to attend an art course at TSC.

The professor was Wendell Brooks, now a highly celebrated New Jersey artist. The course was printmaking, and it was the very definition of inspiring. When I elected to enroll at TSC after graduating high school, I attended every class Wendell taught—some multiple times.

During the seven years I studied with Wendell, the most rewarding experience was learning the fine art of etching. I can't say exactly why I was so drawn to this venerable old process, but I wound up repeating that class five times. The following account may bore some readers to death; others may find it fascinating. I present it solely for the admittedly egotistical purpose of illustrating a wholly unique and quite unorthodox approach to etching which I developed on my own over the course of the years I spent working with Wendell.

In a nutshell, etching is a process of modifying the surface of a zinc plate by a variety of means in order to hold ink, which is then transferred to paper to produce a print. Although an image can be rendered by simply scratching the plate directly with a pointed tool, usually the entire plate is coated with "hard ground," a tar-like paint, which is carefully scraped away with a variety of sharp instruments; then the plate is immersed in sulfuric acid for a period of time to produce deeply etched lines that can hold useful amounts of ink. This process can mimic the finest, most intricate pen and ink renderings.

But many other effects are possible. One particularly challenging effect is called "soft ground," where tones of ink, from various shades of gray to solid black, can be created. The classic method of producing a soft ground is quite bizarre:

It begins with a large wooden box on a tall stand, which has a small flap door at the bottom. Inside the box is small pile of a fine resin powder. The artist takes a wooden paddle and flings some of the powder up toward the top of the box to produce a cloud, then quickly places a clean zinc plate on the bottom of the box and closes the door.

After the dust settles, the plate is carefully removed and placed on a heavy metal grid. A large blowtorch is lit and the zinc plate is heated from below to melt the resin onto the surface. When the plate is cool, the artist may choose to block off portions of the plate to keep them from being etched by applying hard ground.

The plate is then immersed in acid. The amount of etch time is critical: too short, and the etching is too shallow to hold enough ink; too long, and the acid will undercut the soft ground resin and destroy the all-important "tooth" that holds the ink. The very best—and most difficult to achieve—degree of soft ground etching can produce a rich black.

After etching the soft ground, the artist will most likely create various shading effects by burnishing the plate with hard, spoon-shaped tools to smooth out the tooth to varying degrees. Great artists can produce exquisite shading that can sometimes appear photographic.

An integral step in producing the final print is the process of inking the plate, which is an art unto itself:

First, the plate is heated on a hotplate to a temperature just a bit warmer than the point at which it is painful to touch. A glob of ink is applied, and as the warm plate melts the ink, it is distributed across the plate with a wooden spatula. The excess ink is removed with cheesecloth, then the remaining ink is "finessed" using the edge of one's hand. This process is called "wiping," and because it is done manually, the artist has a degree of control over the density of the ink, even in select areas, which in turn affects the final image. As a result, no two prints are exactly alike. (As a side-effect of printmaking, my hands were perpetually stained a dull grey from the ink, while my fingernails were bright yellow from the sulfuric acid.)

The freshly-inked plate is placed on the bed of a press; a water-soaked sheet of paper is placed over the plate, followed by several layers of heavy fabric blankets. The stack is then passed under a massive steel roller that applies tremendous pressure, forcing the paper down into all of the crevices of the plate. The paper is removed and taped to a drying board with wide gum tape applied along all sides, so that the print dries perfectly flat. When dry, the print is cut away from the drying board with a sharp knife.

As you might gather by now, etching is a painstaking process that requires a substantial investment of time and effort, and can take many years to master. Being the impatient, brash young artist I was, though, I found the traditional soft ground methods too complex and unreliable for my liking, and sought different means to achieve the same ends.

Inspired by the art of airbrushing, my idea was to create a series of paper masks, place them on a clean zinc plate, and spray the plate with enamel spray paint. The masks would permit me to apply successively heavier coats of paint in selected areas, which would translate to progressively lighter areas in the image, with solid paint producing pure white. When I described my "crazy" idea to Wendell, I was met with a scowl of doubt. But he did not discourage me; instead, he encouraged me to try, explaining that, should it work, it would be a true "first" in the world of etching.

To everyone's astonishment (not the least my own), it worked. Even more amazingly, it produced deeper, richer blacks than anyone had ever seen. For the first and perhaps only time in my life, I had devised something truly original. And it marked the beginning of a steady stream of output. Owing to the time-consuming (and somewhat physically painful) process of inking the plates, however, I never pulled more than eight or ten prints from any of the couple dozen plates I made; most saw only one or two.

My very first image, at the top of this page, was directly inspired by my favorite photograph, "The Hand of Man" by Alfred Steiglitz. Indeed, being a great admirer of early black and white photography, many of the etchings I designed were influenced by these images. Each subsequent design was more elaborate, involving an increasing number of masks and layers of spray—sometimes dozens. Occasionally a design simply did not work, and $30 or so worth of zinc plate had to be trashed; other efforts produced pleasing results that were radically different from what was intended. Regardless, it was all a thrilling experience; it was also the only occasion when I was free to render railroad-themed artwork without invoking groans of disapproval from professors expecting more "serious" subject matter from their students.

While most of my prints were dark and moody, like the ones seen here, some were bright and airy. One of my favorites was called "Crummy in the Snow," which depicted a bobber caboose disappearing into a swirling snowstorm. The bulk of the image was pure white, with a lone, barren tree in the foreground and only the faintest hint of the caboose as it sped past. Sadly, no prints of this image survive. In fact, all of the plates have long since been destroyed, along with any remaining prints.

—David K. Smith, 28 March 2006

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