The little dog laughed, 2021

Typical to Torr’s visual language, The little dog laughed captures a colourful and open-ended narrative, which takes the viewer on an exploratory journey. To create the rich colourful backdrop for Torr’s narrative to play off against, printer Roxy Kaczmarek silkscreens a colour layer onto delicate Hosho paper. Softground and liftground etching techniques allow the artist to create a range of gestural marks on copper. These are printed on top of the colourful silkscreened layer after which the paper has glued applied to the back and is then cut to size and adhered to the backing sheet of Hahnemühle paper to give the work the traditional etching print border. 

Soft-ground, a very soft and waxy ground, doesn’t dry or harden and yields under pressure, which reveals the plate for etching – leaving a soft, almost fuzzy, pencil-like mark on the paper. After the artist has created a composition by making marks through the ground on the plate, the plate gets submerged in acid which chemically eats or “bites” away at the metal in the exposed lines. The exposed lines will deepen and widen the longer it is submerged in the acid bath. 

The liftground technique evolved from the sugarlift technique and is a direct etching method. During this process, the artist paints onto a degreased plate with a mixture of gum arabic and gouache, after which the the plate is covered in a liquid hardground and submerged into warm water by the printer. This expands the gum arabic mixture, lifting and dissolving the thin ground layer in the water and exposing the copper plate. An aquatint is then applied to the exposed areas and etched to create a solid tone which gives a painterly quality to the mark. 

 With the marks etched into the plate and the plate wiped clean as the printing team prepares for printing, the inked-up plate gets covered with a sheet of dampened paper and is then run through the printing press, which transfers the ink to the paper. Because the dampened paper is forced into the grooves of the metal plate under the pressure of the press, the result is raised lines on the impression. In Torr’s The little dog laughed, these lines add a looseness and freedom to the work, while the pencil-like marks from the soft-ground and the bright silkscreened background relate perfectly to her work as an illustrator.