It’s difficult! That much I have learned already. One really has to watch out how hard one presses on the drypoint needle, or the shadow/light will get all wrong.
On the plus side, I got a pasta press, a cheap manual model (in fact there’s only one model for sale, they are all the same). I hacked out a hole in the base at the bottom (badly), removed all the non-structural plates, and greased it all up a bit better. It works pretty well, though it’s quite limited in the size of paper one can print (14cm wide or so – it says 150mm on the packaging but that’s a lie).
I haven’t really found my style yet. It’s all outlines and sometimes more hatching and sometimes less. There are other ways to do this, but that’s what felt most natural to me so far.
Here’s one with less hatching, from a photo I took of a statue in Berlin Mitte:
None of these prints is really good, I think the paper was a little bit too wet. But it’s starting to go into a direction I like.
Another plate, from a photo of me and a friend, taken by another friend:
I’m still working on this plate, this is how it looked for the print above:
I think the hatching is a bit too deliberate this time, so I’m trying to fix that. Plus it will get some sort of background. That may all make it worse, but we’ll see ◡̈
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