This 2″ x 4″ plate has a 10 step value scale on the left and a continuous gradient on the right.

The value scale becomes more visible once I’ve applied ink and wiped.

Here’s another view of the inked plate.

My goal is to reproduce the value scale on the left. The results, printed on Hosho, are on the right. It is readily apparent from this initial test that my SolarPlate process has too much contrast, compressing most of the dark end of the value scale into a couple of steps. My next test involves a more detailed test print that will allow me to create contrast adjustment curves in PhotoShop.

For this first test, I am just trying to get the correct exposure for the aquatint screen. The goal is to get an exposure and development process that gives a rich black with good edge detail. Once I get a good black from the aquatint, I can start to experiment with gray scales. This test pattern was printed with an Epson 3880 on Pictorico OHP. The central rectangle is an inch square, and the text is 12pt.

This 2″ x 2″ plate was exposed on a NuArc 26-1K Mercury platemaker. I first exposed the aquatint screen with 10 exposure units which took about a minute. Then I exposed my test pattern with 25 exposure units. I developed in water for one minute with gentle abrasion from a paint brush. The plate was blotted and then dried with a hair dryer and then exposed one more time with 25 exposure units to fully harden the photopolymer.

Applying Akua Intaglio with a small piece of cardboard.

Here’s what the plate looked like after wiping with tarlatan cloth and then newsprint. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the region with the white letters on black actually needed more wiping.

Here’s my first intaglio print from SolarPlate. The paper is wet Rising Stonehenge. The impression is nice for a first try, but the plate had too much ink. This resulted in solid black rectangles where the white letters should be and too much plate tone. I printed a second piece of paper off the same plate without reapplying ink and got a decent print.

This print is on a dry piece of Hosho. I wiped the plate a bit more carefully, and this improved the print quality.

This photo shows the test pattern on the left, wet and dry Stonehenge in the center, and dry Hosho on the right. Overall, pretty satisfactory results for my first stab at intaglio with SolarPlate. I want to continue experimenting with exposure, inking, wiping, paper types, moisture levels, and roller pressures until I can reliably reproduce details down to a quarter point. Then I will start to work on gray levels.