Printmaking Resource Guide: Basics

The term covers many techniques for multiplying prints, either of a picture designed by the engraver himself for the medium, or of a reproduction of a work in another medium by another artist. Correctly engraving refers only to intaglio techniques. All these involve a metal plate, usually copper, on which the ink is held in furrows and crevices cut or bitten by acid into its surface: a print is obtained by rolling the plate, covered by a sheet of dampened paper, through a press; so that the paper is forced into the engraved markings, thus picking up the ink.

the art of engraving with acid on metal; also the print taken from the metal plate so engraved. In hard-ground etching... the plate, usually of copper or zinc, is given a thin coating or ground of acid-resistant resin. This is sometimes smoked so that lines scratched through the resin will be clearly visible.

(lĭthŏg'rəfē), type of planographic or surface printing. It is distinguished from letterpress (relief) printing and from intaglio printing (in which the design is cut or etched into the plate). Lithography is used both as an art process and as a commercial printing process. In commercial printing the term is used synonymously with offset printing.

prints made from designs cut in relief on wood, in contrast to copper or steel engraving and etching (which are intaglio). The term woodcutting is loosely included within the wood-engraving process, from which, however, it can be distinguished. Woodcutting, the oldest method of printmaking, is accomplished using soft wood with a knife employed along the grain. Wood engraving, which developed in the 18th cent., is a technique using hard, end-grained wood worked with a graver or burin.

Type of print made from a sheet of linoleum, into which a design has been cut in relief.

screenprinting was well established as a commercial printing process before it became popular with English artists in the 1960s. It is a species of stencil printing, the ink being forced onto the paper through a silk screen that has been partially masked with stencils or treated in other ways with liquid or photo-stencils.

Engraved or incised work on gemstones, glass, ceramics, stone, or similar material in which the design is sunk beneath the surface

Printing from a flat printing plate, in which the lines which produce the image are not raised above or sunk below the surface of the plate, but are greasy, so that the ink stays on the image and is repelled by the rest of the wet surface of the plate

cutout device of oiled or shellacked tough and resistant paper, thin metal, or other material used in applying paint, dye, or ink to reproduce its design or lettering upon a surface. Designing an art stencil differs from ordinary drawing, since the design itself must be cut away, and ties must be arranged to hold the background together and to give definition to the pattern, somewhat in the manner of lines in mosaic or leaded glass.

means of producing reproductions of written material or images in multiple copies. There are four traditional types of printing: relief printing (with which this article is mainly concerned), intaglio, lithography, and screen process printing. Relief printing encompasses type, stereotype, electrotype, and letterpress. Flexographic printing is a form of rotary letterpress printing using flexible rubber plates and rapid-drying inks.