Printing: Ink

Printing treatises from the eighteenth century describe the making of ink at length and discuss the use of ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ oil combined with dry pigment to make black printing ink.⁴⁶ Weak oil is not heated to the same extent as strong oil resulting in differences in their flowing qualities – weak oil being more mobile and ideally suited to intaglio techniques where it migrates down into the incised lines and aquatint pits.

Many of Goya’s prints are printed using a brown coloured ink often described as ‘sepia’, however it is unlikely his ink was strictly made from sepia. Sepia is sourced from the dried ink sacs of squid or cuttlefish and during the eighteenth and nineteenth century it was highly expensive to manufacture and difficult to store.⁴⁷ During the nineteenth century both dabbers and composition rollers were available for applying ink to the matrix, however dabbers were the traditional tool used for this purpose. Like the silk covered dabber used to spread the ground layer onto the copperplate, dabbers for applying ink were the shape of a muller but instead of a silk covering they were sheathed in linen or leather. (See fig. 38). The ink was applied in thin sequential layers using a persistent tapping action, taking care to apply it evenly. Once all the grooves and pits in the copper matrix were filled with ink, the surface of the plate would be wiped of excessive ink.

In some cases, a light film of ink was left on the surface as a way of creating a subtle layer of tone in the print. This is known as ’plate tone’ and it has been used to great effect in the NGV impression of La desgraciada muerte de Pepe Illo en la plaza de Madrid (Pepe Illo in the ring at Madrid) where it has been combined with uneven wiping to add shading and form to the ground on the right side of the ring. (See fig. 39). The lower right corner of the NGV’s impression of íBrabísimo! (Bravo!) has a series of diagonal light lines that appear to be unintentional, and these are probably caused by uneven wiping of the plate using a stiff fabric such as tarlatan. (See fig. 28).