What is a PRINT?It is impossible for someone, professional artist or not, not to come across a print. However, there are only a few people how can tell the difference between an etching and a wood engraving or a lithograph and a screenprint. For some, prints are just copies of one design... of one drawing. A very correct definition.. but such a narrow one, as well! For others, it seems almost insulting to name a print an original, since a series has multiple copies. It sounds impossible to accept the uniqueness of each and every print Printmaking is a unique art, a unique mastery! The divine play of ink and paper, the rough fight between acids and metals and stone, the mystic reveal of marks on plate... This whole universe is so limitless, so fascinating and so enigmatic! The aesthetic effects produced by printmaking techniques are unrepeatable in any other format. The rules that apply in drawing or in painting are more or less followed in printmaking. Therefore, a print should not be analysed based on the principles of a composition used in these other processes. In order to accustom you to those methods, I ll briefly present the techniques, later on, I ll go into more depths, but only regarding those methods that I have explored so far. Printing ProcessesRelief MethodsThe easiest way to present this method is by making you think of a stamp. The design stands in relief from the block and it is printed using a vertical press. The most important processes are woodcut, linocut, wood-engraving IntaglioIntaglio prints are those impressions obtained from metal plates (usually copper, but not only) that are incised (using different techniques). Unlike relief printing, where the ink is applied on the designed surface, and then printed as the image(basically the portions left in relief represent the black and hold the ink and the bits that were cut away are the whites therefore not holding the ink), the intaglio plates hold the ink in the little incisions designed on top of them(the incisions are the black and "the relief" is the white). The ink is applied evenly on the plate and wiped clean so that only the incisions are left inked. Processes: etching (aquaforte), engraving, drypoint, aquatint or mezzotint Planographic- Lithography Printmaker's Booklet Print= a picture or a design made from an inked impression of a matrix Matrix= the surface (metal, wood, other material) on which the image is drawn in order to create a print. This plate or block is eventually inked and transferred to paper. Plates= matrix Impression= one copy of a complete print job produced under a print order. Also printrun (American English pressrun) Working Proof= completed work on an image, yet unfinished, unsigned impression(kept from the market) AP= Artist's Proofs= impressions belonging to the artist, not counted as prints in an edition, yet identical copies printed at the same time with the edition TP=Trial Proofs= experimental prints Edition= limited number of copies/ prints obtained from the same plate, excluding the proofs. Once an edition is completely printed, the matrix is destroyed to ensure that no more prints are pulled from the plate. Fine art prints are considered multiple originals, not reproductions. = A method of printing from a flat surface (such as a smooth stone or a metal plate) that has been prepared so that the ink will only stick to the design that will be printed
1: the process of printing from a plane surface (as a smooth stone or metal plate) on which the image to be printed is ink-receptive and the blank area ink-repellent 2: the process of producing patterns on semiconductor crystals for use as integrated circuits Origin and Etymology oflithography German Lithographie, from lith- + -graphie -graphy
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AuthorFine Art student @BCU Archives
May 2016
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