About the Artist

Roger has been painting oils and etching in Devon for many years. A Cambridge graduate, he has held a number of successful one man shows in London, East Anglia and the South West, and contributed to group exhibitions including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Click here for an article on Roger St Barbe and his lovely hand-coloured etching/aquatints of landscapes, wild flowers and butterflies in DEVON LIFE magazine.

He has illustrated two books of poetry by David Bushrod ('Marshwood Vale' and 'Abbotsbury'). Click here for poetry excerpts.

'Abbotsbury' 'Marshwood Vale'		 Roger St Barbe

Many of Roger's works feature the spectacular coastline of East Devon and West Dorset, but he has also painted in Cornwall, Scotland, Wales, Yorkshire and abroad.

 

Etching as practised by Roger St Barbe


This process has not changed much since the 15th Century. A metal plate is coated with a special black wax, through which the image is drawn back-to-front using a needle. The plate is immersed in an acid bath, and where the needle has exposed the metal the acid bites into the plate, creating fine grooves like those made by an engraver.

The tones of the image are achieved through aquatint, a process developed in the 18th century. A thin layer of powdered resin is settled on the plate using a dust box. Heat transforms the resin into a hard coating, basically acid-resistant but full of tiny holes through which the acid can attack the plate, resulting in a finely pitted surface which will hold ink and print as a grey tone. (The longer the immersion in acid the darker the tone).

To print the plate, it is covered with a thick ink and wiped carefully with muslin rags which remove the ink from the surface but leave it in the lines and dots. The press is a flat steel bed between heavy rollers which force the ink into the dampened paper. The monochrome prints are hand-coloured with watercolours. A limited edition, numbered and signed by the artist, is printed before the plate is destroyed. Thus each print is a hand-produced original, unlike reproductions which are mechanical copies of an already existent work of art.








Click the blue Dolphin to return to the home page...