Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Your new friend.


Sorry I havent been posting as frequently as I have in the past. I've been busy with another new medium ; clay. I shall keep posting images of sculptural work as well as new prints and paintings as they are made. This is a recent print which is really a cheats mezzotint, Rather that using the traditional and extremely laborious method of preparing the plate with a mezzotint rocker I have used a small "mezzotint type" roller to produce an equally rich and lovely black printing area that is then reworked by scraping and mostly burnishing the copper surface to pull whites and mid-tones out from the black.

3 comments:

Momo Luna S!gnals said...

I love it!

Aine Scannell said...

Brian where did you get this mezzotint cheats roller - I would love to have one for myself although I fear that it may be very expensive ??!!

Love the effect !!

Brian McKenzie said...

Hi Aine. The device should be available in any reasonble printmaking suppliers shop. The "roulette" I have has a small milled hard steel cylinder supported so it can rotate (like a wide wheel) on a shaft and handle. Its only about 5mm radius and 5mm wide but can cover an area pretty quickly if you work hard and fast. Mine was around £10 so not too much. There is a much much more expensive version that has a "random" cratered steel device a bit like a mini metoerite on the shaft. I think copper is the best metal for this technique and as with a mezzotint you need to go over the area lots of times in different directions to build up a nice inkholding texture.