My new dry point - A tutorial with progress photos 💜🌸

Good day friends!

Today I want to share my latest drypoint print;

This time it's a little pheasant! 😊

I love these birds! In Norway where I'm from they're all over in the fields and woods.

During the process of making this print I took a lot of photos which I wanted to share with you today to explain the process.

So let's get started! 😊

The first thing I do is make a sketch of what I want to draw on my zink plate. I cut the paper to the same size of my plate and draw my motif.

Here you can see my finished sketch next to my zink plate which I will engrave the pheasant on to.

So how do I transfer my drawing you might ask. Well, I have a trick that I use sometimes if I don't feel secure enough to do the drawing free handed. This is a good tip if it's your first times doing drypoint and you haven't really engraved before. The tricky thing with drypoint is that there really is no way of erasing your lines, and this will give you some points to relate your drawing too.

What you do is basically tape on your drawing to your plate like you can see in the photo above. Then you use an engraving tool like the ones in the picture, kind of looks like a thick needle, and you follow your lines with little "pricks".

Here you can see a close up of the drawing and if you look closely at the lines you can see the little holes from where I punctuated the paper with the needle.

The closer you punctuate the better the image is going to transfer.

After that just follow the dots with your etching tool and then when you have the big drawing it is easier to add more details.

Here is my plate after I was done with the engraving. Where I have car Ed the lines that's where the ink will go.

This is the plate with ink in the engravings. To transfer your image from plate to paper you will need a press. This is because you need the deep pressure of the two coming together in order for the paper to collect the ink up from the engraving. This is often what makes drypoint less practiced, because a press can be hard to come by. I'm lucky to know someone who let's me rent theirs, but sometimes art schools will do the same.

Finally, here is the finished product fresh out of the press! 😊

It's always so satisfying seeing what the end results look like!

What do you think? 🌸
Would you like to try drypoint? 🌸

I hope you are all having a wonderful and creative day!

💛💚💙💜❤