Tuesday, April 08, 2008

A Tribute to Patrick Troughton


A while back I developed a way of producing images on printing plates which like this example resemble a photograph to some degree. The soft edges and gradual changes of tone are made with traditional aquatint; the difference is in the way the aquatint dust is applied to the plate. A carefully made mask of thin card is cut out and suspended above the surface of the piece of metal before it is placed inside the aquatint box. The dust falls through the holes in the mask and is deposited on the plate (subsequently to be etched through) but because the "image" (the cut out holes in the mask) is raised about 5 to 10 mm above the plate the the dust scatters and spreads slightly around the edges avoiding the usual hard edge quality that would normally occur with aquatint.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great image Brian.