Mezzotint vs Stippling
メゾチント / スティップリング（点描陰影）
Mezzotint comes from Intaglio Printing and Stippling from Hand-drawn. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Mezzotint
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The whole plate is roughened to hold a deep black, then burnished back to raise the lights, so that the image emerges from soft velvet darkness instead of from lines.
Stippling
Stippling builds light, volume and surface through the density and size of tiny dots; tone rises from sparse to dense without filling contours with lines.
| Mezzotint | Stippling | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1640s– | 16th century– |
| Family | Intaglio Printing | Hand-drawn |
| Kind | Technique | Technique |
| Cues | Velvet blacks / From dark to light / Soft gradation / Burnished light | Countless small dots filling a contour / Narrower spacing in darker areas / Soft tone without hatched lines / Grain up close and smooth volume at distance |
| Best used for | Portraits and still lifes where the subject emerges out of deep darkness · Frontispieces and covers built around night and a single light source | Scientific illustration, natural history and portraiture with delicate volume · Giving packaging and posters quiet hand-built grain |
| Type | Keep lettering out of the shadows and small on the burnished side | Use a fine serif or small capitals with enough air from dotted fields. |
| Composition | Decide where light falls first and give darkness most of the plate | Begin at the darkest point and build the subject by density rather than outline. |
| Material | Rock the whole plate, burnish back the lights, watch black fade across the edition | Keep one nib size and vary spacing more than dot size to construct tone. |
| Caution | Opening too many lights starves the deep black the method depends on, so treat this as raising light out of a roughened plate rather than as a black gradient effect. | Random noise and halftone are different. Each dot's density must explain form and light. |