Mezzotint is a very old printmaking process. A metal plate - usually copper is roughened with a tool called a mezzotint rocker. This tool has a line of very small teeth on it. By working in a rocking motion repeatedly around the plate, the surface is scuffed up - the teeth bite into the plate and leave pits and peaks - if this was inked up in black ink at this point it would print a solid black. From this roughened state, the drawing on the copper plate is made with a tool that smoothes down the roughened texture or scrapes some of it away. Any area intended to be light needs to be scraped and burnished thoroughly back to shiny copper - this means when ink is applied and buffed off, it comes off the smooth surface, thus printing as a light area and the ink that makes up the dark area is trapped in the textured surface. It’s very slow going but gives a satisfying dense black. I have been considering aerial images of old forest remnants in Invercargill city and the marks on maps that denote land use changes and boundaries. Here are some images of a plate in progress.
Aerial view of Thomson’s Bush. Google.
https://ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE5281345
Alma MMSID: 9914033473502836
Item Title: Map of Invercargill Hundred and part of New River Hundred
Publisher: [Wellington, N.Z.] : Lands & Survey Dept.
Publication Date: 1924
Drypoint - the changing shape of the bush
For this body of work I produced drypoints that I wanted to reflect the changing shape of bush as seen from the air or on a survey as the land use was changed. A ever reducing shape, bitten into by the boundary lines.
