My first Mezzotint
by Susan Moore on Jan.28, 2010, under Original Prints
I just returned from a 3-day workshop with Carol Wax in Norwalk Connecticut to learn Mezzotint. For those of you that aren’t familiar with what a mezzotint is, it is an intaglio process that starts with a ground that is created by several means such as rolling it with a dry-point roulette or rocking the plate with a mezzotint rocker that creates 1,000s of tiny burrs on the plate. If the plate were printed when the ground is completed, the entire image would be black. The artist then creates the image in a ‘reductive’ manner–the burrs are scraped and polished back to white.
Here is my first print–I’m really happy with it. The image is 3×2 inches (not very big). It took 3-4 hours to create the ground using my 3-inch mezzotint rocker. Then, the image took about 2-3 hours to create, plus a little more for proofing and fine-tuning.
January 29th, 2010 on 5:38 AM
This sounds like such an interesting process, a reverse sort of printmaking? Nicely done piece! Can you add colors to these?
January 29th, 2010 on 7:00 AM
what fun you’ve been having! my blog roll isn’t updating your blog, so i’m glad i checked in! love the eye, and the pencil/watercolor overlays…… may have to try that on some of the prints from class…
January 29th, 2010 on 7:19 AM
Yes, you can add color to any print. With a mezzotint, most commonly you do multiple plates and print them in register.