I woke up this morning with an idea for my next mezzotint plate.

It was to use my pencil drawing from last year as a original sketch for a print.

Among my many drawings, I chose the pencil drawing “Shinso no Hana”, reduced the image to a 24x18cm plate size and flipped it in Photoshop. The image was printed out on A4 paper with an inkjet printer. The printer did a good job.

Then I made the back of the paper black with graphite and used it like carbon paper to draw a sketch on a copperplate, but failed. Graphite didn’t show up on the mezzotint plate.

I realized I needed carbon paper, but I don’t have it. But I had an epiphany. The back side of the slip I get when I pay for delivery by courier is carbon paper. When I searched for the slips, I found several. Those slips were small, but when I transferred them to copper plate with a pencil over the copy image, a clear black line appeared on it below.

Today, the day passed quickly with such work. The plan I had in mind yesterday was to go to the library in the morning, then do some shopping, and then finish yesterday’s mezzotint plate working after I got home. I didn’t act as planned, but I’m happy to be able to start making a new plate.