Mezzotint rocking progress
The plate is coming along nicely and quickly. Saturday night, I finished the first two directions. Each pass is marked with an arrow after it is completed so I know where I left off- this becomes very important as the rocking progresses. Each direction gets rocked with two passes in each direction and I do this in 4 directions at 30° each. I will finish the plate by swicthing out the 85° gauge rocker with a much more coarse 45 gauge and rock in 3 directions at 45°. These last three passes will leave a triangular rocker pattern over the much finer circular pattern left by the 85 gauge rocker. A triangular rocker pattern will be clearly visible in the image that is to be scraped and burnished onto the ground. The rocker marks are what attracted me to the mezzotint process and I love to see images that have been produced on coarser grounds and have a rich visual texture. To me, the textured ground resembles tiny fundamental particles that are the basis for all matter.
