New Aquatint

Traditional aquatints are made either by dusting rosin onto a plate then heating until it melts to adhere, or by spraying acrylic emulsions or spraying lacquer or enamel spray paints. I have found the rosin aquatint difficult to use because it is hard to see how much rosin is on the plate when dusting. The spray paint and acrylic emulsion options have a tendency not to adhere to the plate even though they look properly distributed. The cumbersome use of an aquatint box and the adherent health hazards of rosin floating in the air don’t make for a practical healthy environment. The spraying of paints and acrylic emulsions also have health issues of floating particles in the air plus the constant clogging of airbrushes and paint guns. In order to clean a clogged air brush or spray gun water does not do a good job and you are forced eventually to use solvents. A more practical and better way of doing aquatints is to off set a texture that mimics that aquatint pattern.


Roll out on a slab or glass new blue ground. Next take a piece of a special textured polycarbonate or acrylic plastic that has what is called suede texture. Various companies make this plastic: Bayer, Trademark, Markrofol, Sabic, and Trademark, Lexan Polycarbonate Film. The suede texture has minute dots that mimic an aquatint. It has a slight relief. Next roll onto the plastic slowly and lightly building up the tone of the plastic plate. Don’t try to over ink too fast for best results. I like to back the plastic by gluing a piece of off set litho plate to the plastic. The suede plastic should be at least 0.007 thickness or more. 

Next take a piece of smooth grain paper or a prepared piece of the washable school glue mixture and place the clean paper on the bed of the press. Then take the plastic and lay it inked up face down touching the paper. Take 2 pieces of mat board that go beyond the dimensions of the plate, reason being the larger mat board will prevent embossing lines into the plastic, place a piece a polyethylene film over the mat board. Place your felts onto the press. Roll through the press with medium to hard pressure. 

Remove the felts, mat board, and plastic. Peel the plate away from the paper. Next ink up the plate again and repeat the same procedure. Do this 2-3 times. Take a clean deoxidized plate, place the dotted inked up surface onto the plate and with strong pressure, off set the texture onto the plate. Take the plate and heat on a hot plate for 3 minutes at 350 degrees F or 177 degrees C. This sets the ink then repeat. You are building up the ground by layering the pattern. It is possible to experiment with this process by not heat setting the aquatint patterns but this will give you a bigger dot pattern when run through the press. Eventually though you will have to heat set the plate. After your plate has been heat set, it is a good idea to oxidize your plate before etching. Aluminum plates require a medium strength etch. Don’t use a strong etch because it will under bite the ground. Copper plates work best if you use a new batch of ferric chloride Edinbourough. I have also used a solution of 35% BE mixture of ferric chloride. In order to make a 35% BE solution, take and use a 45-47% BE solution and add an equal amount of water. This will be approximately a 35% solution.


It is extremely important to remember that any aquatint will only last in an etch for 1 hour before under biting occurs. You can just wipe off the old ground from your plate with a paper towel and apply new aquatint pattern over it after 1 hour if you want it to be darker. It is possible to get all the traditional tones of aquatint as you can see from the chart.

For a list of suede textured plastic suppliers, click here.