Many people are very confused by prints; seeing a print on a wall they do not quite understand what they are looking at. The purpose of this section of the website is to explain and clarify the terms used in relation to Fine Art.

Much of the problem is caused by the word ‘print’ itself. It can refer to a mechanically created reproduction of a painting or drawing, as found for sale in many museum shops; it can refer to a photographic image; in art terms however it means an image created on a piece of paper by an artist using one of a variety of techniques.

In essence, when an artist decides to draw a work using one of the print techniques it is the same as when he decides to paint or draw directly onto a canvas or a piece of paper. Only the actual method of the image-making is different. The work created is an original work of art by the artist in the same way as a drawing; the only difference is that the nature of the technique allows for the image to be created more than once, i.e. in an edition. There is a close parallel between an artist’s prints and the work of a sculptor who casts his images in bronze. It is usual for him to make more than one cast, but each is seen as an original sculpture.

When artists use printmaking to make images in this way their works are referred to as ‘original prints’. This is to emphasise the fact that they themselves made the work and that they are original works of art, not just a mechanical reproduction.

The Value of Original Prints

A question that is often asked is ‘why are original prints more valuable than ordinary reproduction prints?’ An artist’s work in printmaking, his ‘original prints’, unlike mechanically created reproductions, have a value just like his drawings or paintings. They are works from his own hand, but the fact that they may exist in an edition as a multiple image makes them less expensive to own than a drawing of equivalent importance.

A number of factors affect the value of original prints – the size of the edition, the importance of the work within the overall oeuvre of the artist, the condition ( as for any work of art ) and, for modern prints, the question of whether it is signed by the artist.

Editions and Signatures

It is widely believed that the status of a print is defined by whether it carries a hand-written signature by the artist. In fact there are many mechanically created reproduction prints which are shown to be authorised by the artist by being pencil signed, but they remain reproductions. Equally an artist can work in one of the printmaking techniques to create an ‘original print’ but decide to leave the work unsigned. Such a work remains a creative original work of art, albeit unsigned.

The concept of an artist signing his prints is very modern. In the Old Master period no artist thought a hand-written signature was necessary. Goya, for example, never signed his prints yet they are highly valued works of art. The idea of hand-signing prints started around the 1890’s but did not become a widely accepted practice until around 1910 – 1920.

The idea of the ‘limited edition’ is also modern. Rembrandt and Durer printed and reprinted impressions of their etchings and engravings to suit the demands of the market. Just as with hand-written signatures the concept of limited editions and numbering was introduced as the market for artists prints became more organised at the end of the 19th century. Many very important early 20th century prints are not numbered but the edition sizes are known from the records that the artists or studios maintained.

The Techniques of Printmaking

The following is a summary of some of the differing techniques used by artists to make ‘original prints’.

Lithography:

Frequently used by: Picasso, Dali, Matisse, Calder, Chagall

Probably the most widely known print technique is lithography. Invented in the last years of the 18th century it allows artists great freedom of drawing and the possibility of creating a huge range of visual effects, many of them not possible in actual drawing or painting. It is this creative freedom, allied to the possibility of using multiple colours, which has made lithography so popular with artists.

To make a lithograph the artist draws with a greasy substance, such as a special crayon or a greasy wash, onto the polished surface of a specially prepared porous limestone block or onto a zinc plate which has been treated to have the same properties. The surface is then dampened with water which is repelled by the greasy drawing but absorbed by the block or plate. Ink is then rolled over the surface which sticks to the greasy part and is repelled by the dampened part. A piece of paper is laid over the surface, then block and paper are passed through a press which transfers the inked image onto the paper.

To print multiple colours the artist must draw each the part of the image for each colour onto a separate block or plate. The colours are then printed one by one onto the sheet of paper, building up the image in stages.

Screenprinting:

Examples: Warhol, Haring, Kostabi

With the modern emphasis on images with strong colour screenprinting has become very popular. Its real development came in the 1960’s as a progression of the idea of the stencil print and with it the advantage of not needing a heavy press. A screen of very fine mesh material is stretched over a frame. The artist then covers up the parts of the mesh where he does not want any ink to print, leaving a kind of ‘cut-out’ of the shape that he wants. A sheet of paper is then pressed up close to the underside of the mesh and ink is passed over it. It will penetrate through onto the paper in the open areas but be blocked off in the masked parts.

To print multiple colours the artist must make a screen for each colour then print them one by one onto the sheet.

In the earlier stencil prints ( also known as a ‘pouchoir’ ) no screen was used. The artist made a cut-out of the shape he wanted in paper, cardboard, or even plastic. This cut-out stencil was placed directly onto the paper sheet; when ink was passed over the cut-out it printed through onto the sheet below. This was a technique which greatly appealed to some of the cubist artists in the 1920’s due to the solid areas of colour it created but had in fact existed since a much earlier date.

Etching and other ‘bitten’ techniques – known collectively as ‘intaglio printmaking’.

See works by: Picasso, Rembrandt, Goya, Dali

In all ‘bitten’ or ‘incised’ printmaking techniques the artist uses a plate into which he makes a groove or incision. Ink is passed over the plate surface and is held in the groove. The remaining plate surface is wiped to remove excess ink and the plate is placed in a press. A piece of paper is laid over the plate and the ink is forced by the press out of the grooves or cuts and onto the paper. The plate can be made of copper or other metal of suitable strength.

To print in multiple colours in any ‘bitten’ or ‘intaglio’ technique the artist must either make the parts of the image he wants in different colours on separate plates, or he must apply the different colour inks onto the various parts of the plate and print it in one go.
The grooves or cuts in the plate can be made in a variety of ways, depending on the final visual effect that the artist wants to achieve. The most widely used ways are described below.

Engraving and drypoint:

The oldest of the intaglio techniques is engraving. For this the artist works on a dry plate making a variety of gouges to create the image. The plate is usually placed on a turntable and the gouges pushed away from the artist, giving a particular type of curving line. The differing widths of gouge create differing densities of line when inked.

In more modern times drypoint is often combined with engraving or used on its own. For this the artist uses a needle-like tool, scratching the surface of the plate in free strokes just like drawing with a fine pencil. Because the plate surface is only very lightly incised the lines are not deep and the strokes on the print are delicate but free. Rough edges on the scratched strokes allow the ink to blur at the edges of the print creating tone.

Etching:

In etching the line is incised using acid rather than the strength of the artists hand. The metal plate is first covered in wax. The artist then draws into the wax, using either a stylus or tools with pointed tips. The strokes of the tool reveal the surface of the metal through the wax.

The plate is then immersed in an acid bath. The acid bites into the plate where the bare metal is showing in the lines drawn by the artist, but the wax protects the rest. Varying lengths of time in the acid will produce differing depths of line and therefore different densities in the final printing. After the acid bath the plate is cleaned, ink is then rolled over so as to fill the lines then the remaining surface wiped clean. A sheet of paper is then placed over the plate and run through the press in the same manner as printing from an engraving.

The type of line the artist creates in etching can be varied to suit the visual effects he wants in his image. The line can be lightly or deeply bitten; wide open areas can be cleared on the surface of the copper plate so that the acid bites an area of tone, this is called ‘open-bite’.

Aquatint:

The rather misleading term aquatint is an etching technique which creates areas of tone rather than line. It is frequently combined with pure etching so as to contrast line and tone.

The plate is first covered in a solution made up of tiny granules of an acid-resistant material such as resin. It is then heated so that the resin wash sticks to the plate. The parts of the plate which the artist does not want to bite are then covered in wax, leaving open the shapes he wants. Finally the plate is bitten in an acid bath like any other etching; the acid cuts into the plate around the edge of each granule of resin creating a network of tiny grooves. When the ink is applied to the bitten plate the grooves retaining the ink are so close together that they create and area of tone rather than line.

The problem with aquatint is that the artist has to work in negative, that is he must ‘stop-out’ the areas that he does not want to bite. For example to make a cloud he must paint stop-out on the rest of the sky, leaving open the shape of the cloud.
A method of avoiding this was discovered called ‘sugar-lift aquatint’ which was used to great effect by such artists as Picasso. In this method the artist paints the images he wants onto the plate, for example the cloud, using a fluid in which he has dissolved sugar. He then paints a special stop-out varnish solution all over the plate, even over the image, and the plate is immersed in water. As the water gradually reaches through the stop-out it swells the sugar in the image areas causing the overlaying varnish to fall away, leaving open the shapes the artist painted.
Resin is then applied to the plate in the open areas, as in regular aquatint, and the plate heated as before. The result is to have an aquatint tone only in the parts that the artist actually painted and without him having to think of the image in ‘negative’ terms.

Block Prints or Relief Prints:

Linocuts by Picasso are a brilliant example of this technique.

The very oldest forms of printmaking used cut blocks. These are the complete reverse of an intaglio as the artist must cut away the part of the block that is not the image, leaving the image as raised flat areas. Ink is then applied to the flat area and printed onto a sheet of paper laid over it, either in a press or by simply exerting pressure using a flat surface or even from an implement such as the back of a spoon. The flat surface areas of the block print as shapes and the cutaway parts appear as white or uninked.

Early block-prints were printed from woodblocks, often made up of various pieces of wood fixed together. Printing from the ‘flat’ of the wood, with the grain in the surface, created highly textural images, a quality much exploited by the early 20th century expressionist artists. In the first part of the 20th century artists also began to realise that the newly invented substance of linoleum, either in the form of floor tiles or sheet, could be cut with much greater freedom. At the same time the smoother more anonymous surface of the block allowed a crisper type of image.

Variations on woodblock and lino printmaking were also discovered in which the artist cut an incised line into the flat surface then inked the block in the manner of an etching, with the ink pushed into the line and the surface wiped clean. As a result only the line printed.

The reverse of this ‘line-printing’ technique was used to brilliant effect by Matisse among other artists. He would cut an incised line into a lino block then ink only the surface around the line, not the line itself, the that when printed the image appeared as a white line on a black background.