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Review of Art Workshop - The Art of Drypoint by Cindy Goode Milman

The National Art School (Sydney) ran a Summer School from 12-16 January. Cindy attended The Art of Drypoint workshop conducted by Melbourne artist Marco Luccio. Read Cindy's review of the workshop.

Marco is a great teacher, he was very well structured and planned the entire week of classes perfectly.  Additionally he was quite conscious of where a student was at in their level of skill and easily and effortlessly altered his time and talks to individuals throughout the week.  

As a first timer on drypoint I was a bit intimidated but very excited. Day one saw us practice our sketching (in a wild and free way) with a black biro pen - loosening up and learning to just 'make marks'.  From that step we were given a piece of fairly thick acetate plastic and using the tools we were given a list to buy (carbon tip and student
needles) we scratched away our drawings onto the plastic.  A quick lesson then proceeded on how to apply ink, the skill of wiping back and to the printer press to have an immediate result.

Everyone produced an amazing A4 print on the very first day.  The remainder of the week saw us pick up our skills in applying these same techniques on copper plates (around 0.9mm thick).  Copper is great for drypoint (ensure you purchase drypoint copper as it is much cheaper than etching copper) as you can really establish a varied line from very thick (deep hard mark with diamond point or carbon point tip - kicking up burrs) to subtle scratching (student needle to scraping back a deep line).  The real skill became in the proofing - testing that first print, checking how the ink was applied - too much? Not enough? Creating the much loved tonal values seen in prints to the dark areas being covered properly or missing information - the sketch just needed reworking.

Marco was very generous in his guidance - individually assessing our works and giving advice on changes and marks.  Marco emphasised the importance of 'chiaroscuro' the light and dark aspects of a piece of work and recommended we view the work of Hertha Kluge-Pott and Martin Lewis to name but a few.  

His preferred ink is charbonnel and paper is Velin Arches.  His work can be viewed on his website www.marcoluccio.com and he is represented by Australian Galleries and Impressions on Paper.  

A fantastic experience and enjoyable class where I was also fortunate to meet many print makers and wonderful artists in their own right!