Charles Ritchie

The new print project is complete. We have a final proof that will be used as the model for printing the editions. Jim Stroud, printer and producer for the project, shifted to a bone black printing ink and found that much more detail could be coaxed from the printing plates without sacrificing any of the dark value and presence of the black ink. The images are now far more reflective of my articulations in the copper printing surface. The housing, designed by Janine Wong is fantastic. It has the look of my journals but leaps to a different level with the deep, indigo colored housing and the collapsible, accordion-fold design.

Photograph of Janine Wong in her studio in Milton, Massachusetts as she refines the binding and the housing for the accordion print project now renamed April 2008.

The book consists of 12 accordion fold pages that include 13 images with text extracted from my journal, Book 130. I’ve retitled the volume April 2008 to indicate the pages of my journal encompassed in the printed transcription. The images are a fresh reinvestigation of the way I draw in my books, restudying the compositions in a wide range of intaglio processes. I was pushed to the edge of my knowledge and abilities while making this volume. It stretched me into new territory.

Janine’s design for the housing is very smart. It has a raw linen cover, like my journals do, but is protected by a linen covered indigo slip case.

The accordion fold allows a variety of configurations in which the pages can be arranged and read. Note the Title Page and Colophon are inside the raw linen cover.

The text of the Colophon reads:

“This accordion fold volume is extracted from Book 130 of the artist’s journals.

The copper plates were produced in whiteground and spitbite aquatint, mezzotint, etching and drypoint and executed at both Center Street Studio, Milton, Massachusetts and the artist’s studio in Silver Spring, Maryland between 13 May and 15 September 2008.

Printed by James Stroud assisted by James Ovid Mustin III on Hahnemühle paper at Center Street Studio.

Housing for the volume was designed and constructed by Janine Wong and Iris Grimm.

Thanks to Jenny Ritchie.

There are one hundred edition copies, five artist’s proofs, four Center Street Studio proofs, a printer’s proof, and one BAT.”

Inquires about April 2008 can be directed to Center Street Studio. A deep bow of thanks to Jim and Janine.

Trial Proofs for the Accordion Print Project, etching and aquatint on Hahnemühle paper, six sheets: each approximately 4 x 12″. These pages will eventually be linked horizontally. Upper left is Page 1, lower right is Page 12.

New Print Project Part 7

Proofs for the Accordion Print Project have been returned to me from Center Street Studio. They look excellent. Selections from a few of the 12 pages are included below and an overview of the sheets is shown above. I wrote notes on those proofs indicating to printer Jim Stroud where ink should be wiped selectively from the plates to bring out highlights. Those proofs with notes, seen as details below, were returned to Jim. After another proofing session, Jim has refined the printing a sent me a set of proofs (above) that have been torn out and folded in the configurations that will eventually be linked to form the print. Janine Wong is constructing a case that will hold the assembled volume.  That will be available soon for review. After looking at the proofs for a few days in the studio, I have decided that the plate work is complete.  Our aim is to have an assembled set of final edition prints available for review at the fine art book fair that Jim will be traveling to in late October. (To be continued).

Working Proof for Page 1

Working Proof for Page 2

Working Proof for Page 11

Photograph of studio table with plate 1 for the Accordion Print Project. Tools seen in the foreground include 1/2″ wide, and 1 1/2″ wide mezzotint rockers, scalpels, burnisher and dental tools. Image areas of the printing plate have been roughened and smoothed with these tools to hold varying amounts of ink when the plate is printed. Earlier impressions from the print project are visible (upper left) as is Book 130, the journal which contains the images that are being adapted. A mirror compensates for the reversal that occurs in the printing process.

New Print Project Part 6

When I am in the midst of a project it sometimes takes time to find my next step. I try to pull back a bit, be patient, and listen to the work.

Returning home in July after producing the printing plates for my Accordion Fold Print project at Center Street Studio, I hung the proofs on my studio walls and watched images out of the corner of my eye. I also kept the plates available on my tabletop for study. As time went on, I realized how much I liked the whiteground technique I had explored while working at the Center Street shop (see online journal entry for 23 July 2008). Without having much experience in the painting of whiteground, I had used it boldly, and while the effect I had achieved was a bit ragged and a little too loose at times, the overall feel was energetic and not far from the vigorous watercolor sketching that goes on in my journals. Finding a printmaking equivalent for my watercolor journal sketches seems like an intriguing goal.

However, as I kept looking at the trial prints over time, I realized there were several things that were not sitting well with me. First, I would have wanted more detail in the images. I had tried to articulate elements that had not materialized with the painted whiteground. Secondly, I wanted richer grays; the whiteground had tended toward strong contrasts, blacks and whites. The absence of detail and range of grays was due to my inexperience with the technique; the next time I work with whiteground at Jim’s shop I’ll try to stretching my abilities in this direction. But more than anything else, the blacks in the current proofs were not as rich and dark as I wanted. Mezzotint (see online journal entry for 24 August 2008), the intaglio process with which I have the most experience, can give a deeper, richer black than the black produced with the whiteground. I decided that the solution was to go back into the plates and augment them with mezzotint, working them by hand using a variety of tools, including mezzotint rockers, a scalpel, a burnisher, and small dental tools that works well for smoothing the low metal relief of the surface (see image above). The hand tools allow me to roughen and smooth the metal in selected areas, reworking and enriching surfaces that were previously cut by acid. With these tools I am able to bring out detail, create mid-tones (grays), and make the blacks denser.

The key to reworking is a ½ inch wide mezzotint rocker that I have become fairly adept at using. It allows me to do some very selective roughening of the copper plate. I can pit deep, parallel, serrated lines into the plate’s surface. These lines will hold a lot of velvety printing ink. I think of the areas I’m roughening not so much as fields of darkness, but more like areas of crosshatching. I use the mezzotint rocker to introduce hatching tones that define form; essentially drawing with the mezzotint tool.

I’ve spent more than a month rocking and burnishing (see photo above) and now it’s time to send the plates back to Jim at Center Street to be printed. I’ve been lookng at the physical surface of the plate and imagining what will translate, but you never know exactly what is present until it is inked and printed. In printmaking, one gives up control and allows other forces to introduce unpredictable changes. These forces can improve a work in a way that cannot be premeditated; or can turn a work into a disaster. Printmaking always carries risks and I’ve grown to love it for that. (To be continued)

Charles Ritchie, Daffodils with Astronomical Chart, 1996 working proof, mezzotint on Rives BFK paper, image: 11 1/2 x 12″.

Working in mezzotint is the exact opposite of watercolor in the sense that I am starting with a completely black ground and creating the lighter areas. Watercolor, my favorite drawing medium, is worked from the white page to the darks.

Mezzotint: Part 1

Daffodils with Astronomical Chart was created using a printmaking process called mezzotint. A mezzotint plate is pitted with microscopic depressions that can hold printing ink. Using an arced knife with a finely-serrated edge called a rocker; a copper plate’s surface is roughened uniformly so that if inked, it would print black (see image below). Keeping in mind that I am creating highlights on a dark ground, I smooth out the depressions to make grays and whites. The smoother the surface, the less ink it will catch, and the lighter it will print. A completely smooth area cannot hold ink and will print white.

I use special tools to accomplish the smoothing; a scalpel can shave away layers of metal and a burnisher can press down the roughened surface and polish it. The plates are worked in the my studio, but at various times during the process, I may stop work and ship the plate to my collaborator, printer/publisher James Stroud of Center Street Studio in Milton, Massachusetts in order to see my progress. Stroud rubs ink into the plate, removes excess ink with a cloth, and places the plate on the printing press bed under a dampened sheet of paper. When pressed together, the ink transfers to the paper to produce a test print called a proof. The proof is returned to me for approval. When the work is determined to be complete, a limited group of like impressions called an edition is printed and made available; or published. (To be continued)

Charles Ritchie, Daffodils with Astronomical Chart, 1996 edition print, mezzotint on Rives BFK paper, image: 11 1/2 x 12″

A copper plate being roughened with a mezzotint rocker.

Daffodils with Astronomical Chart is among the 65 works on view in the exhibition From the Inside Looking Out: The Journals, Drawings and Prints of Charles Ritchie, on view at The Gregg Museum of Art & Design, North Carolina State University, Raleigh from 21 August to 8 October 2008.

Note: This print was based on my earlier drawing from 1993-1995.