Scraping And Burnishing

I spent a very busy and creative weekend with two other printmakers from Swansea at Andrew Baldwin’s Trefeglwys Print Studio in mid-Wales, studying his non-toxic intaglio printmaking methods. We started with the ‘faux mezzotint’ technique, using his own make of etching ground to create a pitted surface, like a mezzotint plate and then, after transferring our drawings, set about creating the image by scraping and burnishing light and white tones onto the surface of the plate.

It’s a long and detailed process and I worked on it all afternoon and into the evening, stopping for a meal and then back into the studio until about 9.30. We were all shattered so after a quick cup of tea, we hit our pillows by 10 pm.