Engraving
What is Engraving?
FAQ
Engraving
Engraving
Engraving
What is Engraving?
FAQ
Engraving
Engraving brings the burin onto skin: parallel and cross-hatching, with volume built out of the density of the line.
Engraving carries the intaglio and burin work of the 16th to 18th centuries onto skin: natural history plates, the frontispieces of old books, banknotes and maps. Parallel and cross-hatching, volume built from the density of the line, no solid fill anywhere, and light that is never anything but skin left between two strokes. Its subjects follow its sources: what the old plates depicted, from the naturalist specimen to the emblem. It differs from dotwork in its mark — one lays down dots, the other strokes — and it gives a drier, more graphic, older result. It's a style of great elegance that demands an uncommon steadiness of hand. It pairs very well with dotwork, which takes over in the softest transitions, and with old-style lettering, with which it shares its sources.
On YokoFolio, pick the style Engraving and then your city, and widen the radius if the list is short. There's one test, and it's merciless: the spacing of the hatching. In healed photos the strokes should still breathe — if they've run together into grey, they were too tight when they went in. Look at the evenness too: engraving hatching is judged on how constant its spacing stays, from one end of a volume to the other.
Two source techniques, two results. Engraving in the intaglio sense — burin on copper — gives fine, supple hatching able to model very subtle volume: that's the look of the natural history plates. Woodcut cuts into the material instead: thicker strokes, harder contrast, solid blacks, a rougher and older result. The first makes volume, the second makes mass. Both work as tattoos, with different effects.
Old and scientific imagery suits it naturally: skulls, insects, plants, animals, hands, astrolabes, star charts, allegories. The Flammarion engraving — the missionary pushing his head through the vault of the sky — is one of the most requested designs in the style, and it sits well on a thigh or a back. Pick a subject whose silhouette reads from a distance: the hatching gives the relief, it doesn't hold the drawing up on its own.
The strokes spread over the years, and the tightest hatching ends up running together: an area of shadow built from very close strokes turns into flat grey, and the volume flattens. That's the one real risk in this style. So an experienced artist spaces the hatching more than seems necessary — a fresh engraving piece should look slightly too light. Drawn properly, it keeps its relief for a very long time.