Drypoint yields only a small number of impressions (examples of the same print). The printmaker creates the image by scratching into a metal plate with a drypoint needle. This throws up tiny furrows of metal alongside the scratches, giving a distinctive blurred quality to the resulting printed lines. At first the image prints as a series of dark vertical lines but later, as the metal furrows wear away under repeated printings, the result becomes paler until it virtually disappears.

Dora Maurer used a relatively soft aluminium plate for this example. She printed 39 impressions of the image on to card and then pasted the results on to a linen sheet.