Printmaking

Printmaking is a process for producing multiple original pieces of artwork; painting, on the other hand, is a process for producing a single original piece of artwork. Prints are created from a single original surface, most commonly linoleum, metal or wood. Each print is considered an original work of art, not a copy. Works printed from a single plate create an edition, usually each signed and numbered. A single print could be the product of one or multiple presses.

Printmakers work in a variety of mediums, including water based ink, water color paint, oil based ink, oil pastels, and any water soluble solid pigment such as Caran D'Ache crayons. The work is created on a flat surface called a plate. Depending on the process used to lift the print, artists either carve or draw into their surfaces.

Printmaking techniques that utilize digital methods are becoming increaingly popular and in many markets are the preferred method. Surfaces used in printmaking include planks of wood, metal plates, a pane of plexiglass, shellacked book board, or lithographic stones. A separate technique, called screenprinting, makes use of a porous fabric mesh stretched in a frame, called a screen. Small prints can even be made using the surface of a potato.

The use of colour in printmaking is very different from painting. Colour must be separated that means a different plate, block or screen for each colour that is used. It can be juxtaposed but it is never mixed on the plate or paper like in painting. This subtractive colour concept is also used in offset or digital print and is present in bitmap or vectorial software in CMYK or other colour spaces.

Techniques

The four most popular printmaking techniques are woodcut, etching, lithography, and screen-printing. Other printmaking techniques include chine-coll?, collography, monotyping,engraving,drypoint, mezzotint, linocut, aquatint and batik.Monotyping is not a printmaking technique in strict sense so it does not produce a matrix in which multiple artworks can be produced; it is more a printed painting than a proof of print. These techniques can also be combined.

Digital processes include gicl?e, photographic mediums and combination of both digital process and conventional.