After finishing the bites on the two plates I control to see if the profundity is sufficient. The plates can be recovered with varnish again and the process repeated but if pos- sible don’t do it. If you must recover and etch again use a thicker varnish.

The plates are now ready for the colored inks.  I usually prepare all the colors that I plan to use with several variants. I try to organize the printing so that the areas of lighter colors are printed with the first pass. I must keep in mind several things. Most im- portant is that the paper shrinks as it dries, so once it has been taken from the humid sack there should be little time between the first pass and the second.

Another important thing to remember is that the second plate will slightly deform through pressure the impression of the first plate, spreading the image a bit, so it’s much better to keep the areas that can afford this loss on the first plate and use the second plate for high detail and crisp imagery.