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Art Talk

All About Prints and Printmaking

Index

What is an original print?

Although the concept of printmaking extends many centuries into the past, it is only within the last 100 years that the concept of the original print, as we know it today, has come into being. The course of the 19th and 20th century art, with its dominant movements and great individualists, can be traced in the medium of graphic art. Today, as never before, artists are interested in printmaking by all methods and combinations of methods. This interest is matched by that of collectors, and those who would not so regard themselves, and, while opportunities of acquiring first class prints by dead masters are becoming rarer - and the prints more expensive - this is not true of works by living artists. Here one may exercise personal judgment, without necessarily relying on an established name or the support of conservative critical opinion.

As defined by the Print Council of America, an original print is a work of art, the general requirements of which are:

1. The artist alone has created the master image in or upon the plate, stone, wood block or other materials, for the purpose of creating the print.

2. The print is made from the said material, by the artist or pursuant to his directions.

3. The finished print is approved by the artist. An impression qualifying under each of the requirements set forth above is a direct autographic statement of the artist's intent and is therefore an original work of art. Top...

Relief Printing

The oldest method of making a print is based on the principle of cutting away part of the surface of a flat block of material so that the desired image stands out in relief to form a printing surface. There are two main branches of this technique.

Woodcut

The first involves the use of a plank, cut parallel to the tree trunk on which the artist draws a design and then cuts away that part of the wood not covered by the design. Linoleum is often used today to give a similar result, though its soft, crumbly texture does not allow for fine lines.Top...

Wood Engraving

In the other type a piece of wood cut perpendicular to the length of the tree trunk is used. Since the resulting end grain offers a smoother and more uniform surface than in woodcutting, little of the texture of the wood is apparent in the print. The artist cuts away the design itself so that when the block is printed the image is white on a black background. In many prints both engraving and cutting are used. A coloured relief print is made either by having a separate block for each colour or by hand colouring each design after printing.Top...

Intaglio Printing

The process of intaglio, incised or copperplate printing uses a principle opposite to that of relief printing. The image to be printed is sunk into the printing surface and filled with a greasy printer's ink. Then the surface is carefully wiped clean so that the ink remains only in the incised design. The great pressure required to pick up the ink in the intaglio printing leaves a visible plate mark within the margin of the uncompressed paper.Top...

Engraving

This is the oldest of the intaglio processes. The design is cut out of a copper plate with a sharp tool called a burin. The plate is wiped clean and the ink remains only in the furrows left by the burin.Top...

Dry Point

The artist works directly on the copper plate with a sharp needle which leaves two burrs of copper, one on either side of a scratched line. It is the ink caught in the burrs that forms the design and not the ink in the slight furrow which contains the design. Since the burrs wear off rapidly under the pressure of the printing press only a limited number of copies can be made of the design before the intended effect is lost.Top...

Mezzotint

In principle the medium is reverse dry point, the burr being first raised all over the plate so equally that a proof from the unworked plate would yield a solid black. Everything required to print lighter than this black has to be scraped more or less thoroughly until, in order to produce a white line, the original smooth surface of the copper has been regained.Top...

Etching

Instead of cutting directly onto the plate, the artist covers the plate with acid-resistant ground and then draws on the plate with special sharp tools to remove the ground where the design is to be. The plate is then immersed in an acid bath which bites into the plate where the protective covering has been removed. By leaving different areas exposed to the acid for varying lengths of time the quality of the line bitten can be controlled. The finished plate is then printed as an engraved plate would be.Top...

Aquatint

Instead of lines being bitten by the acid bath whole areas are exposed to the acid. The area is first prepared with a resin, usually in a powdered form, which is dusted on an area heated from below the plate to make it adhere and then given an acid bath to bite the tiny areas not covered by the granulated resin. Most often the technique is used with engraving or etching. However, there are rare examples of pure aquatint.Top...

Lithography

This technique has the most in common with drawing. The artist selects a greasy crayon or greasy printer's ink and draws the design wanted directly on a zinc or stone plate. The stone is moistened with water which is unable to cover the greasy design and greasy ink is rolled over the plate. The ink adheres only to the drawn area because of the antipathy of water and oil. Paper pressed onto stone will pick up only the image of that part of it which is inked. Each colour must be put on the stone in turn to be printed separately.Top...

Stencil Processes

These methods, like woodcutting, involve working on the areas that are not actually printed. The artist prepares a screen of paper, metal, or more often today, silk, in which all areas other than the area to be printed are blocked out. The paper is placed under the stencil, ink is pressed over the stencil and falls only onto the paper through the area in which the stencil has been cut away. Each colour must be applied separately through a stencil cut or blocked out to allow the colour to fall only where wanted on the design. This printing technique is called serigraphy.Top...

Digital Prints - Giclée

With advances in computers it was a matter of time that the artists and printmakers would use the technology as a new medium to produce or reproduce images. In the new century digital printing has become very popular with many artists and publishers and the process has become known as the Giclee prints.

Giclee is a French word meaning 'to spay'. It simply describes the way the digital printers spay the ink onto a substrate. The ink is applied directly on paper or canvas which sometimes makes it very hard to differentiate between the original and the replicated image.

The replication process begins with scanning of the original image in high resolution, usually from a transparency. It is then fed into the computer. After colour corrections and adjustments using imaging software the prints are produced. The advantage of digital printing for artists and publishers is that the prints can be produced on demand. Unlike traditional printmaking one does not have to pull the whole edition all at once. And this makes it economically feasible for many artists to enter the art market.

The digital printing is not always about replication, however. There are many artists who use the computer as another tool to produce art works. Here the result 'the print' is not a mere replication but is considered an original work of art according to many people in the artistic environment.Top...

Reproductions

A reproduction is a print done by some mechanical process, in which the artist has in no way contributed to the process of making an original print: that is, he has not designed the plate. Paintings, drawings, watercolours and gouache drawings are often photo-mechanically reproduced. Very often the artist signs a number of these "reproductions" but they are not true original prints.Top...

Edition

The total number of prints made from one design is called an edition. On a numbered plate the lower number of the fraction tells how many of that print were made. The upper number is used simply to number the prints. Editions are published by the artist, or under the artist's supervision, but with financial backing by museums, art dealers, printing firms or societies. Often a publisher's imprint will appear on a print.Top...

Size of Edition

The size of an edition is determined to some extent by the technique used. Intaglio printing yields many less successful prints than lithographs or relief prints. Editions of less than 100 are considered small. The contemporary artist often limits his editions to 30 - 50 prints, especially if he prints them himself. An average edition is one of 100 to 150. Since many original prints have been produced to accompany a written text, these may be found in very large editions of thousands. The value of the print is often determined by its rarity; but quality has nothing to do with the number of copies of a print.Top...

Printing

Many prints are actually taken by professional printers. This has no importance in itself. The main criterion that determines originality is the degree to which the artist has created the design for the print or done the actual work on the plate itself. The task of printing is a hard one. Each print must be done separately and if the artist does his own printing - which most contemporary artists do - he usually uses a hand press. Naturally if each colour on a print has to be printed separately and each print carefully inked, the task is a long and time consuming one.Top...

Cancelled Plate

When the edition is fully printed, the plate is cancelled. Most artists mark their plate in some way to show that the edition is completed. Sometimes the plates are donated or sold to a museum.Top...

Restrike

Occasionally a cancelled plate is reprinted. These prints are not part of an edition, but since they come from the artist's original plate they are still considered originals. These prints usually sell for much less than a signed and numbered edition copy of the identical print.Top...

Signed Copy

Signing a print is a relatively modern custom (as is numbering) and has nothing to do with originality of the print. It does establish that the artist claims that print for his own work. Many prints are signed "in the plate" which is not the same thing.Top...

Artist's Proofs

Although there is a limit to the edition of a print, there is a custom that the artist reserves the copies lettered, numbered, or marked in a different fashion from the rest of the prints and these are known as artist's proofs. For various reasons they often appear on the market.Top...

States

The mark "etat" or "state" may appear on a print and this means that a trial proof has been taken at some stage in the completion of a print. These proofs are found usually in the cases of etched or engraved works where a testing stage is often employed. These proofs are usually worth more than completed copies or edition copies.Top...