Name of Art Technique That Uses a Blade to Scratch a Surface

An original print is a work of fine art on paper which has been conceived past the artist to be realized as a print, rather than as a reproduction of a work in another medium.  Prints are produced by drawing or carving a composition on a carrier surface (the matrix) such equally a forest block, metal plate or rock.  This surface is so inked and the image is transferred to newspaper by the application of pressure, thus creating an impression or print.

Unlike paintings or drawings, prints usually exist in multiple impressions, each of which is pulled from the inked surface.  The total number of impressions made is called an edition.  Artists began to sign and number each impression around the beginning of the 20th century.

Pace Prints has a 50-yr history of collaborating with masters and innovators of printmaking. The articles below provide an introduction to the principle techniques of printmaking, all of which are practiced in our workshops.

At Pace Prints, we have always pushed beyond established technical limits and definitions. For further insight into the unique approaches our artists and printers take to printmaking, visit our videos folio.

Relief Techniques

Relief printing is an umbrella term used to depict the process of press from a raised surface where the non-image areas have been cut away. Wood and linoleum are traditional matrices used for relief press.

Woodcut

Woodcut is i of the oldest and simplest forms of printmaking. Various implements (both hand tools and ability tools) can be used to cut the epitome into a block of wood. Paper is placed over the inked cake and rubbed by hand or passed through a press to transfer the ink from cake to paper to create the prototype.

Woodcut prints and illustrations were first popularized in Mainland china in the 9th century and spread to Europe in the 14th century where they became a pop medium for the mass distribution of religious and instructive imagery. The woodcut was developed to an exceptional level of creative achievement in Japan during the 17th-18th centuries, theukiyo-e period.

James Turrell "From Aten Reign"

Linocut

The linoblock consists of a layer of linoleum, commonly mounted on a block of wood. This soft material is easily carved using knives and gouges. The image is and then printed as with a woodcut. Linocuts were popularized past Pablo Picasso.

James Siena "Sagging Grid"

Intaglio

The intaglio printmaking method is characterized by an prototype being cutting into the surface of a plate. Traditionally the matrix is copper, zinc or other metal and the cut is made with sharp hand tools or by using acrid. When ink is applied to the plate, it is held in the incised prototype areas and wiped from the surface, then printed on a printing on dampened newspaper.

Engraving

For this technique, a metal plate is incised with a tool called a burin. Neat skill is required to manipulate the burin equally it is pushed at unlike angles and degrees of pressure to produce a characteristic thin to thick line. Engraving techniques were used past the Greeks, Romans and Etruscans for decorating objects but were non used for printmaking until the mid 15th century in Germany. Engraved images are comprised of a multitude of crisp, fine lines. Shading is traditionally rendered past multiple parallel lines or cross-hatching.

Lucas Samaras "Self-Portrait #7"

Drypoint

Equally with engraving, this is a procedure in which marks are made on a plate using a abrupt, pointed musical instrument. Unlike engraving, in which pocket-sized amounts of metal are completely removed every bit the lines are incised, drypoint is characterized by the curlicue of displaced metal, called the burr, which forms as the line is cut. When inked, the burr creates a distinctive velvety appearance. This technique is usually done on soft copper plates. As the edition is printed, the burr becomes flattened and less singled-out.

Dan Walsh "Folio B (Plate Four)"

Mezzotint

This is a very beautiful but time-consuming technique, which was most pop in the 18th and 19th centuries for portraiture and reproducing other works of art. In creating a mezzotint, first the entire metal plate is roughened by marking fine lines into the plate in all directions with a rocker (If printed at this stage, the unabridged paper would exist black). Tones are created by burnishing or scraping into the plate, working from black back to centre values and highlights thus allowing the print to accept continuous tonal range.

Etching

This procedure uses acid to seize with teeth an prototype into a metallic plate that is coated with an acrid-resistant ground. A sharp needle is used to scratch the image through the ground, exposing the metallic. The plate is then immersed in an acid bath where the drawn marks are etched. The characteristics of the marks produced depend on the tool used to depict the image, the type of ground coating the plate and the length of fourth dimension the plate is etched in the acid bath. The carving processes are the near versatile of the intaglio techniques and are oft used in combinations.

Shahzia Sikander "Portrait of the Artist"

Aquatint

Aquatint is an etching method introduced in the mid-17th Century to create a more subtle tonal range than could be achieved with line etching techniques. Powdered rosin is applied and heated onto a metal plate; the metal that remains exposed around the melted drops of rosin is bitten in an acid bath, creating a pitted, grainy surface. These pits concur ink and impress as areas of tone. The longer the plate is left in the acid, the deeper the "bite" and darker it will impress. Shapes are defined by painting on an acrid-resistant "finish-out" to prevent surrounding areas from being bitten. A plate may be bitten several times for a range of tones.

Robert Mangold "Framed Foursquare with Open Center A"

Spitbite Aquatint

An intaglio method of painting strong acid straight onto the aquatint footing of an etching plate. Depending on the amount of time the acrid is left on the plate, low-cal to dark tones tin can be achieved. To control the acid application, saliva, or gum standard arabic tin exist used. Traditionally a clean brush was coated with saliva, dipped into acid and brushed onto the ground, hence the term "spitbite."

Chuck Close "Cocky Portrait/Spitbite/White on Black"

Photogravure

A photographic technique used with aquatint. The metal plate is heated and dusted with a fine rosin for an aquatint ground. In a darkroom, the paradigm is exposed from a photo positive transparency onto a sensitized gravure carbon tissue or moving picture. This image, in plow, is transferred to the metal plate. The plate is bathed in warm h2o, causing the unexposed emulsion on the carbon print to be done away, leaving the epitome in relief. Ferric chloride is and so practical to the plate to eat away the copper in proportion to the highlights and shadows of the gelatin relief. The finished plate is printed past hand by usual intaglio methods. This process has great fidelity to the tonal range of the original photograph.

Direct gravure is a related process where the positive transparency is hand drawn rather than using a photograph.

Zhang Huan "Untitled (Woman Working past Lamplight)"

Stencil

In concept, stencil techniques are ane of the simplest forms of printmaking.  Stenciling can exist any procedure of printing through an opening in a material or a cutout design.  The negative space around the image is blocked out past the solid stencil and the ink is applied through the openings to course the image.

Screenprint (Serigraph, Silkscreen)

Using an prototype exposed onto a photosensitive emulsion, a stencil is created on a mesh fabric (at present synthetic nylon is used instead of silk) stretched tightly over a frame. The image areas are open mesh through which ink or pigment is forced with a squeegee, while the negative space is blocked by the cured emulsion. Screenprints tin can be made onto almost any surface and let for cracking control of ink opacity.

While the almost mutual utilize of screenprinting is to make graphic images with distinct solid color areas, subtler and more photographic furnishings can be achieved using halftones to accomplish process color.  A "rainbow curlicue" can also be used to created a slope, where ii or more inks colors are blended on tiptop of the screen and printed at the aforementioned time with continuous transitions between them.

Pat Steir "Peacock Waterfall"

Pochoir

A directly method for hand coloring through a stencil. The stencil itself is usually knife-cut from thin coated newspaper, paperboard, plastic, or metallic. A stencil and stencil-castor may be used to make create an entire image or to add together color passages to a print.

Pochoir is commonly used to eliminate the need for an additional plate for a small element of a impress, or where an overlaying color, texture, or opacity is desired.

Arturo Herrera "Johannes"

Monoprint/Monotype

The key characteristic of a monoprint or monotype is that no two prints are identical, though many of the same elements may be nowadays. All or role of a monoprint is created from a matrix, etched plate, woodblock or such, whereas a monotype epitome is painted directly onto a smooth unaltered plate and so transferred to paper in a press. These prints are sometimes paw-colored after they are printed.

Nigel Cooke "Cap de Barbaria"

Lithography (Planographic)

The name lithography comes from the Greek wordslithos meaning 'stone' andgraphein 'to write.' Lithography is a chemical procedure invented in the late 18th century and based on the antipathy of grease and water. The image is drawn on a polish rock or plate using greasy pencils, crayons, tusche, lacquer, or synthetic materials, or sometimes by means of a photochemical or transfer procedure. Afterward the prototype is drawn and processed with a mild carving solution, the stone or plate is dampened and ink is applied with a roller. The greasy drawn epitome repels the water and holds the oily ink while the rest of the rock's surface does the opposite. Printing is accomplished in a press similar to that used in intaglio processes.

Will Cotton "Earrings"

Digital Prints

Many printmaking processes may use digital images as source material or as an intermediate stage in an analog process, such every bit press films for a silkscreen or scribing an image onto a matrix or a stencil with a plotter.  However, digital prints refer to works where the terminal image is generated with the help of a computer-controlled output device such as a printer. An prototype file is sent to a printer, such every bit an Epson, which prints it on paper using pigment-based inks.

The archival quality of contemporary digital inks and papers surpasses many analog photographic techniques and another press techniques that use inks and solvents that can discolor over time or damage the newspaper they are printed on.  Like any fine art print, digital prints are editioned and curated to scrupulous standards and are signed and numbered past the artist.

James Turrell "Aten Reign"

Collagraph

A impress matrix tin be fabricated from almost whatever assembly of materials, collaged into an epitome and printed either as a relief impress or intaglio. Surfaces may also be textured with acrylic mediums or materials adhered to a plate. This technique is referred to as collagraph.

Collagraph plates tin can be built upward organically and can create varied textures that contrast with the more than controlled and precise marker-making associated with other printmaking techniques.

Wangechi Mutu "Second born"

Handmade Paper

The adoption of paper as a substrate for writing and printing has been traced to early on 2nd century Advertizement Cathay and Ts'ai Lun, a court official who oversaw the Imperial Library, though its actual invention remains a mystery. It is a nigh versatile fabric and is a key chemical element in printmaking, but many do not realize its awarding in creating prints completely inside the papermaking process.

Pace Paper primary papermakers piece of work with artists to create unique and editioned work in the hand papermaking process. In preparation to creating an image, fibers are macerated in a specialized beater to specific lengths for their specific blazon of awarding. Once macerated into paper lurid, the substance can be used to create individual sheets of paper or, when macerated to a finer grade, tin retain loftier levels of pigmentation and be used in more contemporary applications.

The number of applications of working in handmade newspaper is diverse. Pigmented paper pulp, coined pulp paint in the papermaking earth, can be poured into openings in mylar stencils (on acme of a wet base of operations sheet substrate), building up ane wet layer on pinnacle of another. In some other technique entitled a "blow out", images tin can be masked out direct on the papermaking mould and retain a silhouette directly in paper lurid. Watermarking is an application that tin can be used inside the sheet of paper to create an prototype that is visible when light is shown through the paper. Once an image is created, the entire canvass with layer upon layer of pigmented lurid slowly goes through a hydraulic press, forcing the water to escape and assuasive the fibers to form hydrogen bonds, which agree all layers of fibers together.

Paper pulp can also be used in a three-dimensional format. In a casting, paper pulp is packed direct into a rubber mold, allowed to dry, and will come up out equally a sculptural grade.

Li Songsong "Swordsmanship (III)"

hollomonlaing1951.blogspot.com

Source: https://paceprints.com/techniques