Vintage Copper Printing Plate. Artist?

Copper printing plate. Any thoughts on who might be the artist? The last few images appear to be inscriptions/signatures in reverse, but I'm not sure. Our thoughts, it's probably by a Mexican or Spanish artist....but not sure if this is accurate.

Your thoughts and help are much appreciated.

Thank you!

 

It may be a high school art class project.

 

Still doesn't look like a signature

 

WOOOOooooooooooooo...!!! Scary!!! I think it is an etching on copper which of course is usually made so the image can be printed from the plate. But a "printing plate" per se, made in a printing plant to print books etc, no I don't think so. Those would always be mounted on dense hardwood or plywood at least 3/4 inch thick, with edges exactly matching edges of the copper plate. Is yours a copper plate only or a plate firmly glued to a wood block? Also the copper plate has corrosion pits in it, maybe ok for a hobby project but intolerable for a commercial printing block since all those defects would hold ink and show up in the printed images.

 

Spring is right. It is an etching plate, looks copper to me too, perhaps typical student art - yes scary - but not professionally done, the edges do not appear to have been filed, a student with access to the print acid and shop printers, a youth who liked to draw skeleton heads ick.

 

I was almost always a skeleton for Halloween when I was a kid, my class mates were Cinderela or some other fancy,frilly thing.

 

Thanks, guys!

@Terry, thanks for flipping the image.

@Spring, what you're looking it is just the copperplate. It was adhered to a board, but I detached it to see if there was any info written verso.

Thanks again all.

 

Spring, it looks to me like the "corrosion pits" in the plate were made when it was submerged in the acid wash and simply the oxygen bubbles that form were not feathered away as the plate etched.

Nuff, it's the original art plate once used to print the etchings, mounted on wood at some later point in time.

 

it looks to me like the "corrosion pits" in the plate were made when it was submerged in the acid wash and simply the oxygen bubbles that form were not feathered away as the plate etched.

Possible I guess, if so he was using an etching method I'm not familiar with. I used to etch metals and we covered the entire surface with a resist such as asphalt, then cut the design into the asphalt with scalpel, scribe, whatever, so that no part of the metal was exposed to the acid except exactly where we wanted it to cut.

 

Those bits are for shading


Really reminds me of the MIL

 

Terry, I agree. Also, what's MIL?

I only see one spot on the plate (besides the very edges) were there's corrosion and that's on the figure's cloak near the bottom. What you guys are describing as pitting is the original design by the etcher. No disrespect to either of you, but I really don't see how any of this corrosion and/or "pitting" helps in any way to identify the maker/artist. To me it's irrelevant.

@ANTI, one would assume so. The plate appears older than the board it was adhered to.

 

Mother In Law..

 

Got it.....thanks, Komo.

 

Spring, when I put the etched plate with the black resist into the acid, I had to use a feather to brush away the bubbles on the coated plate that were formed by the acid, otherwise the plate would ultimately etch where those bubbles formed, causing this appearance.

 

Some Day of the Dead illustration?