Surface tone

Article summary

of 1841 with surface tone on the structure at right, and its shadow (the whole print). In printmaking, surface tone, or surface-tone, is produced by deliberately or accidentally not wiping all the ink off the surface of the printing plate, so that parts of the image have a light tone from the film of ink left. Tone in printmaking meaning areas of continuous colour, as opposed to the linear marks made by an engraved or drawn line. The technique can be used with all the intaglio printmaking techniques, of which the most important are engraving, etching, drypoint, mezzotint and aquatint. It requires individual attention on the press before each impression is printed, and is mostly used by artists who print their own plates, such as Rembrandt, "the first master of this art", who made great use of it. Before the invention of tonal intaglio techniques such as mezzotint and aquatint surface tone was really the only way to add tonal effects, but the technique sometimes continued to be used with the new tonal techniques, especially in the etching revival than began around 1850, the "most visible characteristic of [which]... was an obsession with surface tone". This was perhaps under the influence of Rembrandt, whose reputation had by this point reached its full height.…

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