Art Tips
Printmaking History – Hand–pulled Prints
by Nancy Muldowney
Centuries ago reproducing an image was a means of communication. The history of the relief print is the history of people's desire to communicate information through images and the printed word. Reproducing an image in multiples or transferring it from one surface to another, whether that be paper or a textile is a process called printmaking. Engraving goes back to cave art, executed on stones, bones and cave walls. Before paper was developed by the Chinese, printing was done on textiles. The Chinese produced a primitive form of print, the rubbing, in the 2nd century AD after paper was invented.
European printmaking also began with textile printing as early as the 6th century. It was not until 1151 in Spain that the first paper was produced in Europe. The first woodcuts printed on paper were playing cards produced in Germany in the 15th century. The woodcut is one of the earliest and the most widely known forms of relief printing. In a woodcut the background is cut away from the image. Knives, chisels, and gouges are some of the tools used to "draw"" the image on a woodcut.
Intaglio prints are those printmaking techniques which produce the image from below the surface rather than from above like the woodcut. Intaglio prints are engravings, etchings, drypoint and collagraph (a plate on which various shapes and maybe materials are glued onto a firm surface). A print is made by inking the incised lines and recessed textures of a plate, wiping the surface, placing damp paper over the plate, and running it through an etching press. In relief printing only the surface of the plate is inked and printed.
Many artists through the ages have used printmaking techniques to reproduce religious and political events. Many made statements about social and economic conditions through their etchings or engravings. Rembrandt, Tiepolo, Picasso, Degas, and many, many other artists were proficient printmakers besides painters.
Screen printing is the newest form of printmaking but is also has ancient origins. It is also the simplest, most direct procedures for obtaining multicolor images. Fabric stretched over a form with blocked out areas where the ink is not to flow through the fabric according to the design requirements. The antecedent of screen printing is stenciling, which was used to make symbols and decoration in prehistoric times. Screen printing is one form of printmaking that has been widely used in commercial applications. Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock and other more modern artists used screen printing to make their images.
Lithography, another type of printmaking, differs from the other graphic processes in that it depends on a chemical reaction instead of the physical separation of the inked and the uninked areas. It is the antipathy of grease to water and water to grease that is the basis of lithography. Honore Daumier, a French political lithographer, Matisse, Grant Wood, and Kadinsky all expressed themselves in the lithographic form. Originally, lithographs were done on a stone but today lithographs are being done on a plate.
The monotype is an interesting hybrid among printmaking techniques. It is a combination of both a print and a painting. It is named monotype because only one image will be produced from the plate. There are not editions as in intaglio or relief prints. Nor are there series like the lithographs or screen prints.
This is a transfer process just like the etching but the image is worked on a clean surface that contains no scratching or carving, in contrast to an etching plate or woodblock, and no drawing, in contrast to lithographic stone. Early experimenters with the monotype were Degas, William Blake and Prendergast. Chagall, Picasso and others also spent time with the monotype. Many artists enjoy using the monotype as a base and transition for other work, much as Degas did. The monotype can be developed further by drawing and painting on it with other mediums.
Hand-pulled prints as have been mentioned have a different quality to them than those commercially produced prints. They are first of all done directly by the artist themselves or in some cases may be pulled by a master printmaker who works closely with the artist. But in any case the speed in which they are produced is by no means fast or done with a mechanized system.