Test Plate

In my quest for a deeper understanding of mezzotint and which techniques or materials are useful for my practice I recently made a test plate. It's something I should have done before: a bit of a nerdy investigation that might only be of interest to few people as the difference is quite subtle. Anyway, fellow mezzotinters, here it is.

I took a 15x10 copper plate and rocked it as such: the top third is rocked with a 45 gauge rocker (36 passes), the middle one with an 85 gauge (32 passes) and the bottom with both (22 passes 85 followed by 10 passes 45).
For each area I proceeded to either just scrape or scrape and burnish a 5cm square. 
 Working a gradation into the middle area (gauge 85) took around 50 minutes for each square. Scraper marks were immediately visible and appear on the print too. On the right handside square I scraped starting on the dark corner but burnished starting on the light corner. I tried, but found I definetely prefer working from light to dark, insisting on the lighter areas.
Scraping each square in the bottom area (45 and 85 gauge) took about 55 minutes each, working from light to dark. One can feel the coarser surface under the blade.
The top area (45 gauge) is the most satisfying to work on: one is really shaving that copper. The scraping took longer, about 1 hour and ten minutes, while scraping and burnishing took a little less.
 

Conclusions
The ultimate reason to test for me was to understand which combination would give me most grain as this is what I like for my work. By grain I mean visible dots and little marks on the lighter areas of the print rather than evenly gray areas, which might be what other artists are after. 
There is a substantial difference in how the surface feels like while working. Because the 85 ultimately gives a more shallow ground, any tool affects it immediately. So if one advantage of a finer gauge is that it is way faster to rock and to scrape, getting a very smooth transition without scraper or burnisher marks requires a very gentle hand. Even with the 85 there definetely is some grain and the dots are visible, particularly with a careful ink wiping. 

The 45 and 45+85 areas feel way more resilient. The timing increases but the texture on the surface is deliciously uneven. It is way easier to obtain a smooth gradation and obliterate the marks of the tools, even if I don't mind when my prints are showing a little hatching.
Shifting from scraping to burnishing about a third of the way in is something I will definetely do in the next prints. This is one of the cases where being a painter had influenced my way of working: I thought that the circular motion of the burnisher would be akin to "blending" and that it would smooth the surface and in fact get rid of the grain. Not so! I read about this in Carol Wax's book but I had to see it to believe it!
    
For sure these results are also to be considered in relationship witht the size of a plate. Ultimately if I have to work on a small plate I would definetely use the 85 as the difference between the different tools would be too subtle to appreciate. Medium size will be a combination of 45 and 85 at different rates, depending on the subject. Until now I only ever did a very large size plate ( 50x70cm, 85 gauge) and it took me about four months! At that size I would only consider working with an 85 gauge as I am not a masochist! 
Another outcome is that I now have a test plate for inks and papers, so I tried an Arches paper too.

There's an image of the printed plate here but you can download a full resolution file below to see for yourself. Please let me kow if you have any comment. 

testplate.jpg
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