Invented in the mid-nineteenth century and used by numerous French artists, cliché-verre has been described as a print that is “drawn by hand and painted by light.” In the nineteenth century, artists would take a piece of glass coated with an opaque substance such as asphaltum and then draw/etch through the surface to reveal the clear glass. The finished "plate" would be used as a negative to make a print onto sensitized paper. Other methods of making a cliché verre negative involved “smoking” a piece of glass with the soot of a tallow candle and then drawing through the surface to the clear glass. Some artists also scratched through the emulsion of an exposed collodion photographic plate.

Contemporary methods include the use of asphaltum, spray paint, floral paint, etc. The method I use involves "smoking" the surface of glass with kerosene soot. After the "plate" has been drawn or marked upon, it is scanned and manipulated in Photoshop. An ink jet negative is made on paper or transparency from which the print is made.

Additional variants of most of these images are available. All prints may be considered unique as no two prints made from a given negative are exactly alike.