Bunch of information about intaglio printing, from internet and books, compiled :)

1. Group 4

2. Intaglio
• Intaglio prints have always been
considered one of the elite form of
graphic art. The precise nature of the
etched or engraved line, the richness
and tactility of the printed
surface, and the ability of the medium
to amplify the intention of the artist-all
these give to the intaglio processes a
unique and unmistakable identity.

3. Intaglio
• Intaglio is Italian
for „engrave‟ or „cut
into‟.
• It is a printing
process in which the
image is incised or
etched into a metal
plate using a variety
of techniques and
tools.

4. Intaglio
• In intaglio printing, an impression is made by
pushing the paper into inked depressions
and recesses in a metal plate. These
depressions and recesses are created by
acid (in etching and aquatint), by burin or
graver (in line and stipple engraving), or
direct scratching and scoring on the metal
(in drypoint).

5. METAL PLATES FOR
INTAGLIO
• COPPER
• ZINC
• ALUMINUM
• MAGNESIUM
• STEEL

6. Copper Plate
• Ideal for all types of
intaglio techniques
• Copper is popular
as its malleability
allows corrections
to be more easily
made.

7. • Can be purchased in several
forms:
o Photoengraver’s copper (usually 16 or 18
gauge, comes with an acid-proof backing
and is polished into a mirror finish.)
o Uncoated copper (often available by the
pound from metal suppliers, is cheaper and
has the advantage of providing two usable
surfaces. It may have to be burnished or
polished before use.

8. Zinc Plate
• Is usually cheaper
than copper
• Does not hold the
fine detail as well
as
copper, because it
is softer and has a
coarser structure.

9. Brass
• Brass has many of
the same etching
and engraving
capabilities as
copper.
• An alloy of copper
and zinc, it is harder
than either and
similar in price to
copper

10. Aluminum & Magnesium
• Aluminum and
magnesium are soft
and produce few
impressions.
• Fine etched detail is
difficult to obtain on
an aluminum
plate, because the
Aluminum acid bites in a
coarse and irregular
manner.

11. Aluminum & Magnesium
• Magnesium etches
more cleanly, but
the plate does not
endure as well as
zinc or copper.
• Both metals are
difficult to engrave,
because the tool
Magnesium digs to readily.

12. Steel
• Soft steel, despite its
name, is harder that
any of the other
metals mentioned.
• In terms of durability
it may be the most
desirable material,
since it yields very
large editions.

13. Intaglio in General
• Ink is applied to the recessed areas of the
printing plate by wiping, dabbing, or a
combination of both.
• The paper receives the ink from the incised
marks and not from the top surface of the
plate, although thin films of ink may be left
on the surface to produce a variety of tonal
effects.

14. Intaglio in General
• For intaglio printing, the paper is dampened
so that under printing pressure it will be
squeezed into all the inked recesses of the
plate and around it (leaving a PLATE MARK if
the plate is smaller than the paper).

15. Intaglio Printing

16. Depressions are cut into a printing plate. The
plate shown here is not to scale: the grooves
can be fractions of a millimetre wide.

17. The plate is covered in ink.

18. The ink is wiped off the surface of the
plate, but remains in the grooves.

19. Paper is placed on the plate and
compressed, such as by a heavy roller

20. The paper is removed, and the ink has
been transferred from the plate to the
paper.

21. Intaglio
• One of the distinguishing characteristics of
this type of printing is that the dried ink
impression stands up from the paper in very
slight relief, perceptible by touching with the
fingers or by close inspection.

22. Intaglio
• In all intaglio prints, except mezzotint, the
design is produced from ink in lines or areas
below the surface of the plate. The smooth
surface is wiped of ink before printing.
Considerable pressure is used in the press to
force the ink out of the lines and areas and,
to an extent, to force the paper into them,
so the final printed image will appear to be
slightly raised above the surface of the un-
inked paper.

23. TYPES OF INTAGLIO
PRINTS
oEngraving
oDrypoint
oEtching
oAquatint
oMezzotint

24. DRYPOINT ENGRAVING ETCHING COLLAGRAPH

25. ENGRAVING

26. Engraving
Lines are incised on a
highly polished metal
plate by means of a
sharp-pointed
instrument, diamond-
shaped in cross
section, called a burin
or graver

27. Engraving
• The image is made
on the plate as for an
ordinary drypoint,
but before printing all
the burr is removed
from the plate with
the scraper. This
leaves only the
grooves to hold the
ink.

28. The engraved line is
characterized by
-sharp and infinitely crisp
detail
-are often smooth
-flowing-thinner where the
engraving tool cuts less of
the surface metal, swelling
to heavier and wider lines
where the tool is pushed
deeper into the metal
Martin Schongauer
Archangel Gabriel from an Annunciation
Scene
1480. British Museum, London

29. Tonalities are achieved by
- engraving parallel lines close together
(hatching)
- making parallel lines that intersect at
various angles (cross-hatching)
- many closely spaced fine dots (stippling)

30. Charles Burt
William Cullen Bryant.
1884. Collection Deli
Sacilotto
• Engraved copper plates
– yield several hundred
good impression.
• Steel – capable of
holding the finest
detail, because it is
much harder than
copper
- can produce
thousands of impressions
from a single plate

31. Dora Raab
Lady with Fan, detail.
Collection Deli Sacilotto

32. Stipple Engraving
By using the point of
the burin one can flick
out dots of metal to
create a subtle tonal
image- a method
known as stipple
engraving.
J. Chapman
Selim III, Emperor of the
Turks, detail. 1799. Collection Deli

33. DRYPOINT

34. Drypoint
• One of the most
direct and
straightforward of the
intaglio techniques
• Produces a
characteristically soft,
heavy line

35. Drypoint
• Lines are scratched
into the metal plate
using any sharp
instrument with the
same freedom as a
pencil called the
drypoint needle.

36. Drypoint
• The drypoint
needle should be
of hardened steel
and strong
enough to
withstand
considerable
pressure without
breaking.

37. Drypoint
• The effect is spontaneous,
not formal. Cutting into the
plate throws up, on each
side of the cut, ridges of
displaced metal, which are
called burr.
• In the printing of the plate,
these ridges will also take
some ink and print a kind of
inky glow around the line

38. BURR

39. Drypoint
This burr holds the ink
very well. Different from
engraving, this burr is not
removed before the
printing process. The
drypoint technique
typically produces prints
with irregular, more fuzzy
lines.

40. Drypoint
• For the plates, tin or copper is the
preferred material for the drypoint
technique because it is soft and fine-
grained.
• From a commercial point of
view, drypoint has the disadvantage
of a fast wear of the plates.

42. Jacques Villon
Portrait of a Young Woman
1913. Drypoint printed in
black. Museum of Modern
Art, New York

43. ETCHING

44. Etching
• “etching” describes
those intaglio
techniques in which
the grooves are
made in plate by
acid, as opposed to
engraving techniques
in which they are
made by hand with a
needle or burin

45. Etching
• An etched line does
not have the
smooth, crisp quality
of an engraved line.
• It is usually sharply
defined, but slightly
irregular due to the
action of the biting
into the metal plate.

46. Etching
• Lines are drawn through
the ground (acid-resistant
substance) with an
etching needle baring
the metal of the plate.
• Acid is then applied
which eats into the
exposed areas. The
longer the plate is
exposed to the acid, the
deeper the bite and
therefore the stronger the
line.

47. Etching
• Finally, the remaining ground is removed
with solvent and the plate is prepared for
printing.
• Different depths are achieved by covering
some lines with acid-impervious varnish
(stop-out) and biting others a second (or
third) time.
• The appearance of etchings is usually free
and spontaneous but the technique has
occasionally been used to produce results
almost as formal as engraving.

48. Soft-Ground Etching
• One of the
etching processes
which aims to
simulate the
effects of a chalk
or crayon drawing
(see: crayon
manner).

49. Soft-Ground Etching
• The plate is initially covered with a soft ground. The
drawing is made with a hard crayon on paper
which has been pressed to the surface of the
grounded plate;

50. Soft-Ground Etching
• the ground adheres to
the back of the paper
where the crayon has
left indentations in
it, thereby creating an
impression on the plate
of the crayon marks.

51. Giorgio Morandi
Still Life. 1956.
Collection Emiliano Sorini,
Maywood, N.J.

52. William Strang
Frontispiece from Etching, Engraving
and the Other Methods of Printing
Pictures by Hans W. Singer &
William Strang. 1897.

53. AQUATINT

54. Aquatint
• Is a method of etching tonal areas into a metal
plate.
• Name derives from the Latin aquafortis, indicating
nitric acid (literally, “strong water”), and the Italian
tinto, meaning tone.
• Often used in conjunction with linear etching or
engraving.
• The texture of aquatint plate can be coarse of very
fine.
• Its effect is to produce solid areas of tone.

55. Aquatint
• Aquatint is a special form of etching.
• It is created by etching sections rather
than lines of a plate.
• First a porous ground of powdered or
melted resin or asphalt or a similar
ground is dusted onto the plate.

56. Aquatint
• Next the plate is heated from below
and as a result the applied dusty coat
adheres to the metal and is acid-
resistant. The acid is spread over the
plate and bites into the tiny holes left in
the coating.

57. Aquatint
This technique is used to create tone and texture
in a print. The plate is sprinkled with a powdered
resin, heated so the resin melts and clings, then
given an acid bath to bit the areas not covered
by the resin, creating a porous ground.

58. Aquatint
• A technique of acid-biting areas of
tone rather than lines. A ground is used
that is not completely impervious to
acid, and a pebbly or granular texture
(broad or fine) is produced on the
metal plate. Stop-out, second and third
bites are. used to produce variations of
darkness.

59. Aquatint

60. Claes Oldenburg
Floating Three-way Plug.
1976

61. MEZZOTINT

62. Mezzotint
• The only intaglio
technique that
proceeds from dark to
light rather than the
opposite. The metal
plate is totally
abraded with an
instrument called a
rocker.

63. Mezzotint
• Rocker
o a rocker is a tool shaped a bit like a
spatula, but the business end is
curved and covered with a row of
small teeth.

64. Mezzotint
• Were it inked and printed at this point, it
would produce an even, rich black. The
design, in areas of tone rather than lines, is
produced entirely by smoothing areas of the
plate with a scraper or a burnishing tool. The
more scraping and burnishing done, the
lighter the area.

65. Mezzotint Process
• The first step in
creating a
mezzotint is to
cover the entire
plate with a texture
which will hold the
ink. This process is
called Grounding.

66. Mezzotint Process
• Once the plate is
textured, the fun can
begin, creating an
image on the plate
• At this stage, a pencil
line drawing is made
on the textured
plate, or traced from a
drawing made on a
piece of paper.

67. • Then, the artist uses a number of tools to
scrape and burnish, or polish, the copper
plate in the areas that need to be gray or
white.
• This is the part of the process where the artist
is actually making art - Think of it as drawing
the picture, but instead of paper and pencil,
the art is made with copper and scrapers.

68. Mezzotint Process
• The ink is rolled onto the
plate.
• Unlike the ink in your
ball-point pen, this stuff
is amazingly gooey. It
has the thickness of
bathtub caulk, the
stickiness of clover
honey, and the color of
the inside of a deep,
deep cave.

69. Mezzotint Process
• Once the ink is on the plate, and rubbed
into all of the pits and burrs, it‟s time to wipe
the excess away from the surface. This will
allow all of those scraped and burnished
sections to print in grays and whites. All the
parts of the plate that still have the rocked
texture will print in rich, velvety blacks. See
the photo below to find out what this
process looks like.

70. Mezzotint Process

71. Mezzotint Process
The press must put
a very large
amount of pressure
on the plate in
order to press the
ink out of all those
nooks, crannies and
burrs and out onto
the paper.

72. Mezzotint Process

73. Mezzotint Process

74. Mario Avati
Il Est 3 Heures, Madame.
1969.

75. Carborundum mezzotint
Ground
• A good, quick way of producing a mezzotint
ground is to use carborundum (silicon
carbide) grit.
• is used as an abrasive and, in powdered
form, in a method of engraving invented by
Henri Goetz.

76. Carborundum mezzotint
Ground
• He used it to obtain a dotted effect by
sprinkling it over a metal plate (usually
duralumin) which was then pulled
through a press, thereby causing the
grains to penetrate the metal
• The coarseness or fineness of the
roughened surface is controlled by the
quality of the carborundum grit.

77. PHOTOGRAVURE

78. Photogravure
• Sometimes known as
heliogravure (particularly
hand photogravure), this
technique is one of the
most important methods of
industrial printing (the
others being letterpress
and offset lithography).

79. • It is an intaglio process which can be divided into
two procedures: (1) Hand photogravure, a
derivation of the aquatint in its method of obtaining
tone. After sensitizing a copper plate and exposing
it to light to form the image, resin or bitumen grain
was scattered over it. The procedure continued as
for a normal aquatint plate.

80. • This technique subsequently developed into a
totally photomechanical process: (2) Machine
photogravure, in which the tone is supplied by a
cross-line screen. It was discovered that the plate
could be bent into the form of a cylinder, a
development which allowed very fast printing
speeds (rotogravure). The technique is used more
for magazines and catalogues than for print-making
itself.

81. Photogravure Process
STEEL FACING - A
copper plate must be
steel faced to avoid
wear to the etches.
The process uses
electrolysis to apply
the facing.

82. Photogravure Process
PREPARING THE PAPER -
The paper must be
cut, uniformly
dampened, and stored
in that condition in order
to provide the ideal
printing surface.

83. Photogravure Process
INKING THE PLATE - A
special mixture of inks,
representing a sepia
tone, are mixed and
applied to the entire
face of the plate.

84. Photogravure Process
WIPING THE PLATE - The
plate is wiped with a
tarleton in several steps
to remove excess ink
and assure that the ink
has been applied
uniformly.

85. Photogravure Process
THE FINISHED PLATE - A
photogravure plate
contains etches from
one to thirty microns
deep in order to capture
the entire tonality of the
glass positive of the
photograph

86. Photogravure Process
PLACING THE PLATE ON
THE PRESS - All
photogravures are hand
printed, using
mechanized or manual
Brand presses. The plate
is laid in place on the
press in a premarked
position to insure proper
alignment.

87. Photogravure Process
PLACING THE PAPER
ON THE PLATE - The
photogravure process is
one in which ink from the
plate is forced from the
grooves onto the paper
by the pressure of the
press

88. Photogravure Process
FINISHED GRAVURE - The
entire process takes
nearly twenty minutes to
complete as after each
strike, the plate must be
cleaned, re-inked,
wiped, and again
placed on the press.

89. FIN