 Above: The inked up copper plate before printing through the printing press |  Above: the printed image | This type of Mezzotint was created by preparing a copper plate as follows... the copper plate edges were bevelled and the plate cleaned and degreased. Acrylic hard ground was poured onto the plate, step dried and hardened overnight. 400 grit "Wet & Dry" paper was placed over the copperplate, with the grit side in contact with the prepared hard ground surface. The press was set at a heavy pressure and the plate with the "Wet & Dry" paper grit in contact with the set hard ground surface was passed through the press about 10 times with the "Wet & Dry" paper being moved each pass through. The resulting surface was a very fine aquatint pitted surface. The plate was then placed in a Ferric etch solution for about 40 mins. The plate was then ready to scrape & burnish to produce a Mezzotint image. * After seeing Graeme Peebles beautiful and technically perfect Mezzotints at Wisharts gallery in Port Fairy I realize I have a long way to go but the experimental alternate method was worth trying. |
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Above: Images of the scraping and burnishing with tools Above: the initial inking up process of the plate.
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