Aquatint
Videos
Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching that produces areas of tone rather than lines. For this reason it has mostly been used in conjunction with etching, to give both lin
1835 aquatint showing the first production of I puritani. Note range of tones.
Demonstration sections of printed aquatint, magnified.
Goya, No. 32 of Los Caprichos (1799, Por que fue sensible). This is a fairly rare example of a Goya print entirely in aquatint.
Philibert-Louis Debucourt, The Public Promenade, 1792. Printed in colour from various plates, using etching, engraving, and aquatint. One of the leading achievements of the French 18th-century colour-print.
Mezzotint
Videos
Mezzotint is a monochrome printmaking process of the intaglio family. It was the first printing process that yielded half-tones without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatchin
Aquatint
…a plate, but is very often combined with a linear technique such as etching, especially for outlines, figures and buildings. Another tonal technique, mezzotint, begins with a plate surface that is evenly indented and roughened so that it will print as an even and fairly dark tone of ink. The mezzotint plate…
Saint Agnes, mezzotint by John Smith after Godfrey Kneller, usually thought to be a portrait of Kneller's daughter, Catherine Voss
Ludwig von Siegen, Countess Amalie Elisabeth of Hanau-Münzenberg, 1642, is the first known mezzotint, using the light to dark method.
Early mezzotint by Wallerant Vaillant, Siegen's assistant or tutor. Young man reading, with statue of Cupid. Probably made using light to dark technique. 27.5 cm × 21.3 cm (10+13⁄16 in × 8+3⁄8 in)
Four-colour mezzotint of Louis XV by Jacob Christoph Le Blon, 1739