"My
interest in mezzotints began in the early 1970s when I was an art
student at UC Santa Cruz and tried to emulate the beautiful Mezzotints
of Avati and Hamaguchi that I saw reproduced in printmaking books.
However, there were no books, no teachers, and virtually no U.S.
practitioners. I was stymied, yet intrigued. Certainly the sensuous
velvety blacks captivated me, but also the elegant simplicity and
purity of the technique. The ability to be in total control of tonal
gradations, limited only by the pressure of my hand, rather than
the whim of the etching acid, was satisfying. But above all, this
medium had the capacity to imbue my simple still life images with
a reserved strength and beauty which I could obtain in no other
way.
"To achieve the subtle qualities of tone I spend many hours
"rocking" a copper plate with a mezzotint rocker until
the plate has thousands of tiny holes, each with a bit of raised
copper burr. These burrs hold a tremendous amount of ink, and a
fully rocked plate prints a rich velvety black unparalleled in any
other print medium. To obtain an image, I scrape the surface of
the plate, variously lowering the surface of the burrs so they will
hold less ink and thereby yield gradations of dark and light. To
print white, the plate must be scraped and burnished to an absolutely
smooth surface. To grasp this manner of working, think of covering
a sheet of drawing paper with charcoal and erasing out an image."
Read
Holly Downing's biography... |
