The magic of printmakinglies in the process of the production and in the anticipation of the first glance of the ink image after the printer or the artist exposes the image from the worked surface that was pushed through a printing press and flips to record the results of his or her labor. Image via Description of the Aquatint Process Image via / Right: Francisco de Goya - There Was No Help. Left: Francisco de Goya - The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. At that time, aquatint was rare as the process was relatively difficult and time-consuming. For this purpose, aquatint held its place until the 1830’s when it was replaced by tinted lithography. These images were very similar to the watercolors and were much celebrated yet sold at the fair price. The first results were various tones of gray and black, few later colored by hand. It is the area of topography production in particular that this printmaking process helped to develop. Le Prince’s innovation was surely a breakthrough and it quickly caught on in England where the trend of landscape watercolors was developing. Unlike engraving and drypoint, where the marks and lines, created by the bite of the acid are what build an image, aquatint is focused on a variety of tonal differences. The coining of the term was formed in England by the artist Paul Sandby for the purpose of describing the results. The coined term, in fact, originates from the two Latin words ‘ aqua’ for water and ‘ tint’ for tone, which in fact describe the effects produced. He was the first to implement a process which involved the sprinkling of fine powder rosin dust on a metal plate, where the particles were later fused to the metal surface by a heating process upon which the plate was placed into an etching bath with a mixture of acid and water. A French artist Jean Baptiste Le Prince did this in 1786.
Image via The History of Aquatint ArtĪs mentioned at the beginning, the discovery of the aquatint process echoed the desire to reduce the hard labor involved in mezzotint for the achievement of various tonal results in ink images. Johann Wilhelm Schirmer - Aus dem Park Chigi. Both to an extent dangerous and yet highly awarding, the discovery of such a method of production dates far back to 1768 and you can imagine how rich its history is, so let us take you on its journey. This result is one of the reasons that the aquatint technique allows its lovers to not only produce fine art print editions, celebrated in the growing number of print fairs around the world, but to ‘dip’ into more commercial waters, such as illustrations and original book designs. The creation of such pieces, the original printed images that are hand-made, use a range of traditional techniques such as relief, intaglio, planographic, serigraphs, and monotypes yet today our focus is placed on a method of intaglio printing where the acid helps to create an effect of a water wash. Here, we aim to bring to you all the secrets of the aquatint printmaking technique, its history, process, and some of the most celebrated pieces. For anyone that has ever held a zinc or copper plate in their hands and has experienced the thrill two metal plates hold as the starting points for one of the longest creative tradition, will for sure enjoy the story behind he thin metal.
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