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About Engraving

Engraving is an intaglio printmaking process in which lines are cut into a metal plate in order to hold the ink. In engraving, the plate can be made of copper or zinc.
The metal plate is first polished to remove all scratches and imperfections from the surface so that only the intentional lines will be printed. When making an engraving, the printmaker incises or cuts a composition directly into the surface of a metal plate using a sharp tool, known as a burin: a steel shaft ending in a beveled diamond-shaped tip that is set into a rounded wooden handle. The printmaker holds the burin by placing the wooden handle against the palm of their hand and grips the shaft with their thumb and third finger. The burin is then set to engage with the surface of the plate. When pressure is applied, the burin cuts away a thin layer of the metal to create a recessed line or groove in the plate. Cutting into the plate also results in the displacement of a thin curl of metal residue. Different sizes of burins can affect the size of the lines; the pressure the printmaker applies to the burin can also be used to create thinner or thicker grooves in the plate. Creating smooth lines requires both strength and control on the part of the printmaker. To enhance a purely linear composition with tone, the printmaker applies a system of hatching—lines, dots, and dashes, among other kinds of markings, placed close together to create denser areas in the print that hold more ink. The closer the marks are placed together, the darker those areas will appear. The printmaker must take care not to cut the lines or the markings too closely together so that the ink does not bleed between them.
Once the full composition has been cut into the plate, it is ready to be inked and printed on wet paper.

About Dry Point

Dry point is a variant of engraving, done with a sharp point, rather than a v-shaped burin. While engraved lines are very smooth and hard-edged, dry point scratching leaves a rough burr at the edges of each line. This burr gives dry point prints a characteristically soft, and sometimes blurry, line quality. Because the pressure of printing quickly destroys the burr, dry point is useful only for very small editions; as few as ten or twenty impressions. To counter this, and allow for longer print runs, electro-plating (here called steel facing) has been used since the nineteenth century to harden the surface of a plate.

The technique appears to have been invented by the House book Master, a south German fifteenth century artist, all of whose prints are in dry point only. Among the most famous artists of the old master are prints by Albrecht Dürer, he produced 3 dry points before abandoning the technique; Rembrandt used it frequently, but usually in conjunction with etching and engraving.

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