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Once I was
invited by an art university in the U.S. as a "Visiting
Artist" for introducing my mezzotint works and technique to the
students. Though the students had majored in the print art,
completely none of them had experienced the mezzotints. Moreover, all
were surprised at the large size of my print works. I finally
could understand why they had never tried the mezzotint works, although
they all had yearning for the beauty of them. This came from the
dislike feeling of the tedious process for plate grounding in the
mezzotints, "burring" as it is called.
The
burring is performed using a burring specialized and comb-like toothed
tool called berceau or rocker. The toothed edge is
rocked methodically, vertically, horizontally, diagonally, over the
copper plate until the surface of the plate is completely covered with
impressions made by its teeth. For example, I spend approximately
10 to 13 hours for preparation of a mezzotint ground in an A4 size
copper plate. We all might agree with the student in the U.S. who
expressed the mezzotint is a "patient technique".
However,
this patience is a must to produce the jet-black texture peculiar to
mezzotint; the foundation of infinite tones from black to white.
This is the equivalent to the grounding of an oil painting, so we cannot
eliminate the necessary steps. Depending on the image and the size of a
print, there are times when I change the type of berceau teeth
(according to the number of teeth in one inch, there are numbers of 65,
85, 100, etc.) or render partial burring.
After
the plates are thus prepared, then the drawing starts. In the case
of mezzotints, drawing means scraping process. The grounding,
burred completely by berceau, produces a surface similar to the
fine burrs of a metal file. The burrs are scraped away carefully
by an engraving knife called a scraper. The jet-black
surface and shades of gray are expressed by the depth and the density of
these burrs. After flattening with a scraper, I add oil and then
polish with a burnisher (spoon-like tool) when I would like to
have the whitest tone.
For
all that "patient technique", thus more than 40 years have
already passed since I was caught in this trap.
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