Art of Intaglio - What is it?

L. Joshua Goodman is an Intaglio printmaker who brings life to his works. He enjoys taking everyday objects and putting a new spin on them. He looks for simple found objects and recreates them with new and different meanings in his prints.

In this site you can learn about Intaglio and see Joshua's prints. You can find his prints from last year, from last month, as well as from last week. They're all here. The portfolio in this site is updated regularly, so be sure to check back often.

Intaglio - A Crash Course

Intaglio (pronounced in-TAL-ee-oh) refers to a family of printmaking techniques that were invented in Germany in the early 1430s. The Italian term means to engrave or cut into. In this method, an image is incised into a plate, usually copper, steel or zinc. There are several different ways of creating that image on the plate. We will address here some of the methods that L. Joshua Goodman uses: etching, drypoint, aquatint, sugar lift, and spit bite and some other techniques of his own invention.

To print an intaglio plate, ink is spread onto the surface and then wiped off with a soft cloth to remove the excess. After a final wipe with the palm of the hand or old newspapers, the plate is left with ink only in the incisions.

A piece of high quality paper that has been moistened in water is now put on the plate. Together, the two are rolled through a printing press, pulling the ink from the plate to the paper through careful and uniform pressure. This printing method is recognizable by the recessed impression of the plate seen on the paper.

L. Joshua Goodman takes advantage of the features of each technique in his works, often combining different Intaglio techniques on one print.

Etching

Etching is an old technique that was used in the fourteenth century for applying decorations on armor. It found favor as a printing technique by Rembrandt in the seventeenth century.

To create a plate for etching, the plate is covered with an acid-resistant substance such as wax or resin ground. Using an etching needle, the image is incised into the resin layer exposing the metal below but not scratching into it. The sides and back of the plate are covered in varnish to protect the plate from the acid.

When the plate is dipped into acid, the acid bites into the metal left exposed by the needle. Those acid-bitten lines hold the ink onto the plate. The quality and intensity of the line produced can be manipulated by varying the concentration of the acid mix and the time immersed. It is also possible to immerse in acid successively, drawing only one section of the design at a time, which causes the first lines drawn onto the plate to be darker than the final lines.

While etching can be created with soft ground or hard ground, the soft ground offers less resistance and can produce a texture or a line that resembles pencil or crayon. With the hard ground, the lines are much more hard edge and, well, line-like, resulting in thin and wiry lines with blunt ends.

Drypoint

Drypoint prints are created by scratching the surface of the metal plate with a needle, creating a rough metal bur to hold the ink. The drypoint technique results in prints with irregular or fuzzy lines. Because of the fragile nature of the bur, the plate will only yield an edition of ten to twenty good quality prints.

Aquatint

Yet another type of ground is called aquatint. It is another material that resists acid, but it does not give a solid coating on the plate. Composed of fine particles, aquatint is used for making tones in the print.

In this etching method, the plate is dusted with fine particles of rosin. The plate is then heated so that they adhere. Followed by a coat of varish or tar on the areas outside of the image, the plate is then immersed in acid. As the acid bites around each tiny grain of rosin, the various tones are created.

Spit bite aquatint is a procedure in which the acid bites the plate unevenly through a process of painting the acid over the aquatint surface. The effect could be compared to that of a watercolor wash.

Another variation on aquatint is sugar lift. In this technique, the design is created by painting a sugar solution onto the plate. After drying, the sugar solution becomes sticky. A hard wax ground is then painted on the plate, after which the sugar dissolves, As this happens, the hard ground lifts from the plate as it is submerged into water. The areas left exposed are then aquatinted before the printing. To produce an even more delicate effect, the aquatint can be applied before the sugar solution and hard ground.

Now, to the Prints

As you browse the prints, hit the "contact" button at the top right of each page to send your comments.

To stay tuned in to new thoughts and works, don't miss the L. Joshua Goodman Printmaking blog about art at: http://jjamdesign.wordpress.com/

Enjoy.