It was an ordinary day. Reading an article in a magazine called ROCK&GEM. Have no idea how I got the magazine, but some of the stories are rather interesting. The story I opened to today is titled REVERSE INTAGLIO CARVING! Now, for a starter...do you know what intaglio is? Lucky for me...since I taught high school Industrial Arts in the same school from where I graduated and we did quite a few Intaglio projects as both a student and a teacher. I learned intaglio printing while in high school from Mr. Richard Miller who was my high school art teacher. May not be exactly what I am about ready to read about, but then again...it just might be. My idea of Intaglio printing (not reverse intaglio), as taught to me by Mr. Miller, is printing from a flat surface. I eventually taught the same procedure to my students when I went back to my high school to teach Industrial Arts. My students would take a piece of clear thin plastic, usually 4" X 6", and use a pointed device they would hold in their hand, and scratch lines into the piece of plastic. It could be their own design or drawing...or if they weren't real talented, they might place their plastic on top of an old pencil or pen and ink drawing and trace over the lines with a pointed device. After having finished their scratching, they would place an oil-based, rather thick, ink on the plastic and rub the ink into all the scratched lines. OK so far? The procedure is rather dirty, but I would insist they don't wear gloves or they would spoil the learning process! After getting the majority of the ink off the surface...and their hands with a cloth, they would take a clean cloth and wipe the rest of the ink from the plastic, being careful not to take any ink from the lines they had scratched. To me, that is what is called intaglio. The image is scratched below the surface. The students would then place the inked piece of thin plastic on a piece of soft paper and run it through a hand-operated intaglio press which would squeeze the ink from the lines they had just scratched onto a piece of soft semi-moist paper. The results were amazing! Now...I assume that reverse intaglio as described in the magazine article is somewhat the same except you reverse the clear plastic after you have wiped the ink from it, so that it shows through to the front leaving the front surface flat to the touch. There is no need for paper except to maybe place it on the scratched side so the ink doesn't wipe off on whatever you chose to place the scratched or carved surface upon. That, is what I assume is reverse intaglio carving. The carving is done on the back side of the piece, so that it shows through to the front leaving the front surface flat to the touch. I believe that what my graphic arts classes did was similar to what I read, but perhaps there is something entirely different that I am not aware of. So...if you are an artist who specializes in reverse intaglio carving...please leave me a comment telling we where I might have gone wrong. Many thanks ahead of time. It was another extrarordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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| A reverse intaglio print - you are looking at the un-scratched plastic side and not a piece of paper. |
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