Original drypoint prints and other types of fine art prints can help enhance any room in your home while supporting your effort to tie an interior design together.
Similar to engraving, with drypoint, an artist incises a metal plate with a sharp tool. As the metal is carved, metal shavings, also called the burr, build up in the grooves. But unlike with engraving, the burr is not cleaned away with drypoint, resulting in very soft, velvety lines. Since the burr slowly wears away with each printing, fewer impressions can be made, and the first impression tends to be stronger than the last — a characteristic that sets the technique apart from many other printing methods.
Drypoint is a simple technique used to produce intaglio prints. Intaglio is a broad term for the variety of methods used to create images by incising a metal plate, either with a sharp instrument (engraving, drypoint and mezzotint) or with acid (etching, aquatint and photogravure).
“If you talk to great artists, they see printmaking as another part of their practice that often informs what they do,” says Sharon Coplan Hurowitz, a print specialist and art adviser who has worked on major print projects over the years with Johns and Ellsworth Kelly and authored the catalogue raisonné of John Baldessari’s prints.
Find a collection of drypoint art and other types of prints on 1stDibs.