The Process of Printing

I've decided to make a video of the slow, tedious, beautiful, and satisfying process of printing an etching plate. I build up my printed images by layering and arranging different etched plates on a sheet of paper. I can print one or two plates per print per day, and then I need to let the ink dry before I continue the next day. I'm still trying to resolve some of my proofs that I'm not happy with yet, but some prints I've started printing for the editions already. In this video you can see me apply the ink to an etching plate; the ink gets pushed into the etched lines and grooves. Then I wipe the plate with a tarlatan to carefully clean the excess ink off the surface without wiping the ink out of the grooves. In the end I polish the surface with phonebook paper to remove as much plate-tone (ink residue) as possible. Once the plate is inked up, I place the printing paper on top and run it through my printing press. I print on a thin translucent Asian paper, which allows me to see through to arrange the plate just in the right position. In this particular print I'm also printing on both sides of the paper, where the forest on the backside will later faintly shine through to the front of the image. The front image consists of partly digitally printed satellite images and four different etching plates. Enjoy! (And no, I don't really move through the motions at that speed...if only!)