Dewar was one of sixteenth century Germany's most prolific etchists, as well as a notable teacher. To pass on his craft to the greatest number of students, each of whom paid him a handsome fee, Dewar developed a method of transferring student drawings directly to the copper engraving plate.

 

This "Etch-a-Sketch" technique consisted of breaking up the line drawing into hundreds of tiny reference points, which were numbered sequentially and transferred to the plate. A student could then rapidly and effectively complete the engraving by using a burin or similar tool to connect the dots in the correct order.

 

Unlike a similar technique, the Pointlessism of the 19th-century painter Georges Sureart, the drawings of Dewar and his school were executed only in black ink, since shades of gray were all that people saw until color was discovered a century later through Isaac Newton's landmark research.

 

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