Experimentation with paint stripper

Note: Protective clothing, including gloves and face mask, should be worn when using toxic substances.

Spurred on by a printmaking workshop I attended last week, where my results were approximate at best, I’ve spent the last few days working on etching into lino in a more successful manner than I achieved during the class.

I first played with lino etching nearly 4 years ago (posted here) where a wax resist used as stop-out was applied to certain areas and then the entire piece was immersed in a fairly diluted caustic soda/water solution. The exposed areas were ‘eaten’ by the caustic soda solution before the lino was scrubbed and dried, then printed. I progressed to intaglio inking the etched areas, with a second colour rolled over the surface (shown left). The orange is the intaglio and the sepia is the rollover where the wax resist had been.

In the method described above the negative space, i.e. the area you don’t want to etch is painted with a resist – wax in this case – and the remainder will etch. You need to be aware of the back and edges of the lino as if they are not sealed they will also be eaten away.

I’m now exploring another method: the areas I want to etch are painted with the corrosive product. This may seem straightforward but diluted caustic soda runs across the lino and tends to bead or pool on the surface. Precision can’t be guaranteed.

Paint stripper, with the consistency of thickened fluid, can potentially replace this and be used in a painterly manner. In the sample, above left, you can see the clear difference in application between the pooling caustic soda solution and the painted coverage of the paint stripper.

On the right is my painted piece. Once dry, the lino was run under the tap and scrubbed to remove the etched surface.

First lesson learned: Caustic soda solution can be made to varying strengths, so you can do a slow gentle etch, checking along the way, or a much quicker violent etch. To stop the etch the lino can be immersed in a water bath.
Paint stripper is weaker but you can allow to dry then reapply multiple times.

Second lesson learned: Caustic soda solution, being fully liquid, is self levelling and will etch fairly evenly. You can achieve good depth with clear sharp edges.
As paint stripper is not self levelling it will create much more texture, although shallow, and the edges will be softer.

Above left: First print, from the workshop. Ink was dabbed onto the lino in multiple places then spread using a small piece of cardboard which was dragged across the surface. Tarlatan was used to push ink into the recesses and remove excess ink from the surface. The paper was supplied and was thinner than I’d normally use and only soaked for 1 minute.

Above right: Second print, also from the workshop. Ink was applied the same way, ditto tarlatan wiping. Using my finger I rubbed yellow ink onto some relief areas and wiped back using my palm gently against flat tissue paper. This was printed on my own 20- minute-soaked BFK Rives printing paper.

They’re both terrible results. NEVER in my own studio or when I teach would I squeeze printing ink directly from the tube onto a print matrix – any type of print matrix. Inks need to be modified to achieve the correct consistency and strength, then applied using a ‘spatula’ of cardboard, a toothbrush, a roller, a piece of tarlatan or finger tip.

Back home I went through the etching process a second time, reworking the original etched areas. The paint stripper was left on for 36 hours before removal.

Using both a scrubbing brush and a nail brush didn’t remove much more lino at all, so I used this burnisher and proceeded to scrape the etched sections. They were softer than the non-etched areas and started to come away but are still not terribly deep, but workable. Having been soaked and dried several times the lino was horribly bowed as shown in the photo. I just manhandled it back into shape! Or should that be ‘womanhandled’ it?

Using a toothbrush, ink – blue in places, dark green in others – was forced into the etched areas which, of course, caught some of the relief sections as well. A pad of tarlatan pushed the ink into the textural areas before surface wiping using tissue. This removed most, but not all, of the ink from the non-etched parts. I prepared my relief colour, rolled it out onto a glass slab to ensure the roller/brayer was lightly, and evenly, coated and rolled it carefully across my (now flat!) lino.

A significantly better result. However I had 3 attempts before I got here.

Third lesson learned: The rollover has to be done with minimal ink, very lightly applied to the surface with a slightly soft roller. If the roller is too hard it simply skids across the surface and doesn’t deposit an even coating. If the roller is too soft, and any pressure is applied when rolling, it catches a significant amount of the etched areas and deposits colour. The paint stripper etching, despite having been done twice, still remains very shallow so is likely to pick up some of the surface colour no matter how careful you are.

It’s a bit of a fiddly process but I can see uses for it. For example, if lino is being used to produce landscapes and similar the etching could be drawn as clouds and tonal variation could be achieved in sky, sea or foliage. None of those require exacting results so this technique could be helpful.

It occurs to me that once the initial paint stripper etching has been done, and there is at least some surface removed, a caustic soda solution could be carefully applied to the area to deepen the etch and create sharper edging to the shapes. The semi-etched areas should form a recess where the solution can pool and stop it running away and ruining the remainder of the lino. This assumes you want a deeply defined etched piece of lino.