My latest intaglio print <3

Finished Creations
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Honey wake up ! It is that time of the year dcthecook posts his prints again

Greetings fellas, once in a while i post some of the artworks i print here.
Today i would like to graze you all with one of my favorite works from Gustave Dore
-The Pale Horse of Death-

The artwork itself is part of his Divine Comedy photoengraving depictions that are imo some of the best.
The image itself was engraved on a copper plate, then selectively inked with some of Charbonnels etching inks and then It was pressed under 0.6 GPa sandwiched between moist-ish paper and wood with metal backings. I know i know. Flat press unga bunga. I am waiting on my cnc guy to make my cylinders ok ? I want a rotary press as much as the next guy

This is the artwork, made ready for import in Lightburn. I am not sure if the site compresses it but native it should be 100 pixels/mm . There is no copyright to this, as it is a historical piece of art, so feel free to download ahoy.

horse of death
horse of death1920Ă—2429 1.25 MB

The copper plate post engraving ( <3 please mods let us upload videos, gif = abomination <3 )

20260929_121825(1)

image
image1920Ă—2560 943 KB

And of course the result post print

image
image1920Ă—2560 1.42 MB

image
image1920Ă—1546 855 KB

A few bullet points on the results.
I chose to do white ink on black paper on purpose. The zoomed in picture is on a 1200dpi scanner which is kind of reaching the limit on how blurry vs clear you can get some of the lines.

The black paper itself is very regular, store bought 90gcm cotton paper meant for water colors. It is VERY noticeable that the wrinkles and surface deformations are larger than the ink lines, causing unwanted effects in some zones, such as irregular ink distribution on flat zones.

I did fk up the border. That is because i was impatient :smiley:

Laser setup
ComMarker Omni 5W
maxed out on the “power” settings.

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Nice piece of work, especially when it comes from such a dark Xylography.

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@bernd.dk Thank you. Gustave’s works have always been hard for me to do by intaglio he uses an unusual amount of dark lines. The image here itself, with text and border is 59 x 86 mm so some of the lines are approx 30-40 microns which is pretty nice for a nanosecond gravure laser.

I always get the classic wiping issues you get with laser etched metal. So have been thinking of moving maybe to some of the toyobo photopolymer plates.

Or get a femtosecond laser for extremely clean ablation that will not leave crater marks. But those cost as much as a house

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Sometimes you don’t understand how the ancient artists could create such fine details with their tools on wood or copper.

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This is beautiful and super interesting! Great work, and thank you for sharing!

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