I Managed to finish the plate and pull some good prints for this mezzotint this past week. Really happy with the results, however it was a real challenge cleaning the plate for print. Those familiar with mezzotint will know that when you ink the plate you cover the surface entirely with colour... in this case black. The entirely inked surface is then wiped very gradually and delicately with tarlatan cloth to remove excess ink. There exists a very fine line between an over-wiped plate and one that is not wiped enough, and somewhere between those two extremes (not extreme at all) is the perfect polish. This is a really difficult point to arrive at, and takes a great deal of practice to achieve and to recognize that point. When looking at a properly cleaned plate it will often look much much darker than what it will look like on the paper... and for me it proved to be the barrier to overcome with printing this plate as I would consecutively over wipe and have results that would render at texture that was far to strong.
Sadly, this picture doesn't quite do justice to the print.... however, so is the nature with most photographs of prints and paintings. In the case of this photo the texture appears far grainer than it really is, in favour of showing a relatively accurate representation of the tonal values.
Enjoy the Fugu Papilio
