In 1980 AlYousif took part in a printmaking workshop at the Asilah Cultural Forum in Morocco, and returned to Bahrain having imported the country's first printing presses. The decade that followed was the most prolific of his career: hundreds of zinc etchings and drawings, worked in a fine, patient line that suited the medium's demand for precision.

Subjects range widely, from studies after nature to reworkings of the folk themes established in the 1970s oils, but the etchings share a graphic discipline distinct from the earlier paintings, built through cross-hatching and controlled bite rather than colour and mass. A 1988 solo exhibition of zinc etchings at Dar Al Ghad, Manama, brought this body of work before the public. It represents both a technical achievement, printmaking barely practised in Bahrain before his return from Asilah, and the deep well of drawing from which his later, sightless work would draw its assurance of line.