Living Prints® Woodcut On-line
Rubbing-off the tracing
Imagine how difficult it would be if, while eating a meal,
you had to cut through a paper napkin that covered your plate!
Visualize a tender piece of fish or chicken, for example, and,
covering it, your napkin! Even if the napkin were thin,
and you could see your food, cutting through it would be difficult--not
to mention unpleasant. That is how it is to the wood-cutter who
uses the pasted-tracing paper method, as I am doing. If he or
she doesn't like it, here is they do.
This is the situation: I can easily see the lines of my tracing,
and I can cut the lines with my sharp knives, but the paper fibers
get in the way. So I use the "rubbing-off" technique,
meaning I moisten a fingertip and gently rub on the paper. Soon,
the paper fibers roll away as tiny wads and "spit-balls"
of fiber. Then the design shows more clearly and--as I cut--there
are no paper fibers to get in the knives' way. The clean lines
of the intricate details show up better.
The ink from the ball-point pen stays put. The lines seem to be
imbedded in the dry paste coating.
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In this picture the arrow points to the tiny wads of paper fiber
that I rubbed-off with my fingertip. The first tracing
is on paper made of a long vegetable fiber (as contrasted with
wood-pulp paper, for example).
Some techniques are difficult to show or describe in books
or on the Web. Others have been taken from real life on educational videotapes in my library and archives,
and serious artists, collectors and educators use videos to expand
their knowledge of printmaking. Yet many printmaking vignettes
defy documentation, providing us with an endless account of anecdotes
and shop-talk. These are part of "Living Prints" because
technique in an of itself can, for some people, enliven
the art, craft and design of print making. Maybe that is why the
art of the print is one of the oldest, rife as it is with technology
story-telling, old and new.
Select frequently asked questions.
©1999 Bill H. Ritchie, Jr. ritchie@seanet.com