On Printmaking
When I first studied abroad in England I got thrown into the Printmaking department and I will confess (since it’s years later) that I didn’t actually know what that meant. I had, of course, heard of etchings and lithographs when I studied art history, and done a lino cut in high school art class; but I had never actually considered that it was a thriving area of study. But from my first step into that print studio I was hooked. The huge beautiful presses with hand over hand wheels, the smell of ink warming on the hot plates, everywhere I looked I saw people carving and refining, lifting paper and inking plates, all with such precision and care. It was love at first sight.
Since I’ve come back to printmaking lately I thought I might write a little bit about the printing process and just how the woodblock monoprints started. It’s always fun to hear how an idea developed and printmaking as a whole can be very misunderstood. The confusion stems mainly from the fact that the term print can have several meanings. When an artist says they make prints, they can mean two things. First they can be referring to creating a reproduction – a copy of an original piece of artwork, usually a giclee print on fine quality paper. They are usually signed and sometimes editioned, but they are not the original piece of artwork. The second meaning can be a print in which the print itself is the original artwork. A print is any artwork which involves inking up a plate of some kind and then transferring the ink to paper, fabric or some other substrate. The plate can be made of all kinds of materials and the type of printmaking is usually determined by this. For example, etching involves creating a plate out of metal (usually copper or zinc), lithography is usually a stone plate, and woodblock – you guessed it – is wood. Within these genres there are lots of different ways to print, but I won’t get into that today. The important thing to note is that the print itself is the original artwork, even if it’s an edition. So to walk through a very simplified example – let’s say I want to make an etching. I get a copper plate, place a ground, etch lines into it either by hand or using acid to bite into the plate. I wipe ink onto the plate and print it onto paper. I decide that it will be an edition of 25, meaning that there will be 25 numbered identical prints in the run and then the plate will be retired. I will ink up and print the plate only 25 times (and maybe a few Artist Proofs). Each of the 25 prints is an original work of art.
My current prints are original, they are the work of art itself made by inking up wood plates and printing them on paper. They are also monoprints, meaning that they are one of a kind, not an edition. The combination of colors, plates and composition on any given print is unique to that print only. I have a library of plates I’ve created from different types of wood. Each type of wood is unique with different grains and printing properties. I also vary the viscosity of the inks which means that they stick to the plates differently allowing for varying coverage and transparency. After a collection of plates are inked up I then print them one or two at a time on printmaking paper (my favorites are Arches and mulberry). Strictly speaking woodblock printing is done on thinner paper and barrened by hand. However I’m really liking the effects I get by running the plates through my press on a thicker paper. I suppose that gets to the heart of what I love most about printmaking. It’s a highly process orientated art form yet so full of opportunities to experiment. My current prints developed out of me experimenting with bits of left over wood floating around my studio. I needed a break from painting one day and on a whim inked up a random piece of the wood and ran it through the press. I had forgotten the quiet and deliberate nature of printing and just how soothing it can be. The act of inking and printing and reprinting was meditative, becoming a recurring source of peace and inspiration for me. Each print is printed several times, with the plates overlapping and interacting as if in its own little conversation. And they don’t always magically work; for every one or my print you see online there are several more that you don’t see. Ones that weren’t successful with a bad overlap, a plate slippage, or simply a bad composition. The challenge and anticipation of building the perfect print is what keeps me coming back to the press over and over again.
So that’s my tiny printmaking introduction. I’m planning of doing a few more posts on different aspects of printing (starting with inks!) but if there’s something you’d like to hear more about comment below and I’ll see what I can do. Thanks for tuning in and happy printing!
