Douglas Winter
artist printmaker
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The prints embrace the full range of techniques of etching on zink, steel and copper using various resists, they can be hard ground, soft ground, aquatint, sugar lift, dry point, open bite and burnishing.

In hard ground etching, a metal plate is covered with a waxy ground. I draw through the ground with a steel point, revealing the bare metal. The plate is immersed in acid, which eats into the metal where it is exposed by the incised lines. These marks hold ink, which is printed onto damp paper with the aid of a heavy etching press. Variations of this technique give the artist a wide range of drawn and painterly marks.

Soft ground, enables me to draw on paper laid over the ground, the ground sticks and lifts with the paper, exposing the plate where I have drawn, then the plate is etched as normal.

Aquatint, creates tone by etching a random pattern of 'dots' through a ground of scattered grains of resin melted onto the plate.

Sugar lift, allows me to paint with a dilute sugary solution that lifts the ground off when immersed in warm water.

Burnishing, polished the plate to create highlight.

Open bite, is where the acid is allowed to attack the metal with no aquatint, so the acid produces a deep hollow.

I can make marks on the bare plate with a stylus or diamond, this is called dry point, the ink catches in the burrs of the scratched line.

All the inks are make by me from pure pigments, the colours are very pure and infinite in their hues, I do a lot of blending of different colours on the plate, so each print will vary slightly from one to another. 

I also produce reduction lino prints the image is created using one piece of lino, starting with the lightest area, printing, then reducing the image to produce the next lightest area and so on, usually using four or five colours per print. There is only one edition of each print produced, as the lino gets cut away, eventually  being completely destroyed.