Mezzotint is an intaglio printmaking technique famous for its rich, velvety tones. Where most intaglio methods build an image out of lines, mezzotint works in continuous tone, capable of the deepest blacks, the softest greys and glowing highlights, almost like a photograph or a tonal painting. Its name comes from the Italian mezzo-tinto, meaning "half-tone", and it was the first printmaking method that could create true half-tones without hatching or dots.
Working from dark to light
The idea that makes mezzotint unique is that it works from dark to light. The whole surface of the plate is first roughened all over so that, if it were inked and printed straight away, it would come out solid, velvety black. The artist then creates the image not by adding darks, as in drawing, but by taking them away: smoothing and polishing the roughened surface so that those areas hold less ink and print lighter. The more an area is smoothed, the paler it prints, and a fully polished area prints as pure white paper. In effect, the artist draws with light out of darkness.
How a mezzotint is made
- Roughen the whole surface of a copper plate with a rocker, a curved, many-toothed steel tool, rocking it back and forth across the plate in every direction until it carries a dense, even burr.
- Work the image from dark to light, smoothing and scraping down the burr where you want lighter tones, using a scraper and a burnisher; polish fully for bright highlights.
- Ink the finished plate and wipe the surface clean, so ink stays only in the roughened pits, exactly as in any intaglio print.
- Run the plate and dampened paper through a rolling press under high pressure to lift the ink and transfer the image.
Because the burr is shallow and delicate, it wears down quickly under the press, so only a limited number of fine impressions can be pulled from each plate.
A short history
Mezzotint was invented by Ludwig von Siegen, a German soldier and amateur artist, who made the earliest known example in 1642. Prince Rupert of the Rhine is credited with developing the rocker and bringing the process to England, which became the great centre of the craft. Through the eighteenth century mezzotint was the main way of reproducing paintings and portraits, so much so that in France it was simply called la manière anglaise, "the English manner". Jacob Christoph Le Blon made early colour mezzotints from 1739 using a separate plate for each colour. The technique later declined, as rocking a plate by hand is enormously laborious, but it was revived in the late twentieth century, helped by Carol Wax's 1990 book on the subject, and kept alive by artists such as Yozo Hamaguchi. You can read more about the printmakers who shaped these methods.
Mezzotint and relief printing
Mezzotint is one of the most demanding techniques in all of printmaking: preparing a single plate can take many hours of rocking, it needs specialist tools and a heavy rolling press, and it is almost always practised in a dedicated studio. At Ritualis Press we focus on the far more approachable relief printing, which needs little equipment and no press to begin. If you are drawn to printmaking, the linocut and the woodcut are the easiest places to start. Our step-by-step guide for beginners will get you going, and the glossary explains any other term you meet.