Whelp. Its all done. I printed my last stone a few days ago and finishe printing my mezzotints today. The last stone gave me a bit of trouble when I first started printing it. It seemed to be inking up fine but when I was printing it, the solid black sections looked really streaky. I assumed that it wasnt inked up enough and did a few more passes with the roller. It looked slightly better ut there were still patchy sections. I decided to pack up and consult the lithography bible, i.e. the Tamarind Book of Lithography Art and Techniques. It gave me a few good ideas for improving the inking process. The first thing I changed was the temperature of the stone. Previously, I had the window open, due to covid rules but this made the stone very cold as I was working. this time I only had it open a crack and the stone was slightly warmer. The other thing it suggested was to change the roll up pattern. I hadn't really thought about the pattern I was using to roll up my stone. As long as it was inked and looked good, I was happy. The book suggested using a fan method which I did and it really improved the end result. No more streaks! The final print turned out really well. I'm really pleased with it.
I also finished the mezzotints today. It was quite hard initially to draw up the plates since you can't really see how the final image will turn out. I decided to err on the side of caution and my first prints were really dark.
However, this method allowed me to really build up the image and get the tones right. The final prints turned out great and I'm really pleased with them.
