Engraving with Burin
Engraving has two meanings. It can be used as a general word to mean that the grooves in the plate have been made directly, without the use of acid, which is used in etching. Engraving can also mean that the plate was marked using a tool called a burin, which has a v-shaped blade designed to remove the metal that curls off the plate when you cut into it.
Drypoint
Drypoint is the form of engraving that artists tend to use the most at Crown Point. Drypoint lines are simply scratched into a plate with a sharp point. The scratching doesn’t remove the metal, but throws it up as a burr or ridge, similar to the ridge of earth thrown up when a plow goes through a field.
Learn more about this process by purchasing:
Magical Secrets About Line Etching and Engraving: The Step-by-Step Art of Incised Lines
Author Catherine Brooks is a master printer at Crown Point Press, printers and publishers of etchings since 1962, and she draws on the venerable history of that institution to create an inspirational and highly usable how-to book. Crown Point Press founder, Kathan Brown, adds an appendix on hand-wiping and printing that teaches you to ink and print etchings with Crown Point’s superlative quality.
