Printmaking: Intaglio

Intaglio is a technique in printmaking in which lines are acid etched onto a zinc plate. It is different from woodcuts and linoleum printing in that it is not a relief print. In relief printing what is cut away from the block is what does not print. However, in intaglio, the lines that you etch are the lines that print. This is because the plate is put through a printing press that exerts great pressure over it... you use a special kind of paper that is soaked in a water bath before printing to make it pliable... and the pressure of the press pushes the paper down into the is line work that you've created, picking up the ink. This is the part of the process that is illustrated by the first picture of my hand print.

However, there is another facet the process that you can add to the plate which is called aqua-tinting... that's how I got that fabulous range of greys and blacks. In this process, you cover the plate in a very fine coating of resin particulate and then bake that particulate onto the plate. After that, you re-etch the plate and depending on how long the plate is left in the acid is how dark it gets, i.e. the longer a plate is left in the acid, the darker and richer the grey/black. You get the range by coating the plate in an acid resist called hardground or asphaltum. Where the plate is covered, the acid does not etch the plate and the grey stays lighter.

Now the reason that aqua-tinting is necessary to get those nice blacks is because there has to be something on the plate to hold the ink. Before printing, all the excess ink is wiped off the plate, so if there is no texture to hold the ink, the ink will simply be wiped off and you'll get a fuzzy grey/white instead of black. Aqua-tinting is the means to create the texture. When the rosin is baked into the plate, it creates microscopic peaks and valleys, parts of the plate that are covered and parts of the plate that are not. And when the plate is put into the acid, the parts that are not covered by the rosin is eaten away by the acid, leaving tiny pocks to hold the ink.

This is by far and away my favorite technique that I've learned in printmaking so far because it allows for a lot more detail and precision and, in my opinion, expression. Instead of using awkward tools to carve something away, you basically draw on the metal with a stylus... the line quality is nicer and simply more controllable. I really liked my self-portrait, but I think this is my favorite print so far.