"All Ears" by @aylishgiamei

This little chap ( the long earred bat ) is " all ears" because he sees and navigates his nocturnal word using sounds.
He finds his next meal using echolocation.
The print is a mezzotint. This is an old and notoriously difficult method of printmaking.
First a copper plate is roughened all over using an instrument called a rocker.
The roughened surface takes up all the ink giving a gorgeous velvety black.
The paler tones of the image are achieved by smoothing the rough surface with scrapers and burnishing tools so that the ink wipes away to varying degrees.
This gives a tiny range of greys and white.
Its a very time consuming way to creating an image but I find it meditative and satisfying. I think the rich blandness lends itself well to portraits of nocturnal animals.