Explanation and My Second Attempt at Dry Point--The Succulent

In response to the general confusion created by yesterday's post, here is a brief explanation of dry point!

Dry point is a method of intaglio printmaking. In italian, intaglio means "to incise" or "to carve". There are a bunch of other methods you can use to make prints, inlcuding etchings (YES like "do you want to come up and see my etchings?"), aquatints, mezzotints, etc. You can combine the methods to make a very complicated and layered print, or you can use only one to make it more simple. Its kind of like how you can just grill some chicken or you can marinate, poach, then grill the chicken for a different effect

To make a dry point print, lines are scratched directly into a metal or plexiglass plate. When you scratch lines into the metal, you get depressed lines and burrs, which are the raised up extra bits of metal that come out when you scratch out the lines. You don't clean off the burrs in dry point like you do in some other printmaking techniques. You wipe your plate with ink, and the ink settles down into the depressed lines and falls off of the smooth metal parts. The burrs soak up a TON of ink and give dry point prints their characteristic fuzzy irregular lines. You can't really predict what kind of effect the burr will make, so its kind of like watercolor in that you kind of desire these surprise effects. After you ink your plate, you put it through a press, which you can see on this youtube video (I recommend starting it at the 7 minute mark unless you want a complete tutorial!

Ok, now onto my second-ever dry point forray...

The plate:

The first printing (overwiped):
Another one of the prints:What it would look like in a frame!