Printmaking is the process of making graphic art, normally on paper. Unlike original paintings, drawings and watercolors, printmaking allows for multiples of the same artwork: these are considered original art as the plates or stones on which they are made bear images created by an artist, and are very often printed under the artist’s supervision and control.

Prints may also be published in book form, as artist’s books or in limited edition illustrated books. The difference between an illustrated book and an artist’s book is largely one of degree: the latter is usually one in which the artist had the major or an equal role in the book’s design and illustration. Both will usually be signed and numbered.

Prints may be made from different platforms and in different methods. There five basic methods, with variations and combinations possible:

Relief printing: where the image is produced from a raised surface, created by cutting away the areas which are not to be printed. Woodcuts are the most familiar of these methods.

Intagio printing: where the image is produced from a design cut into the platform. When the finished plate is wiped clean, ink is retained in the grooves and marks, and is transferred to paper in the printing process. These processes grew from the jewelry workshops of the late medieval period, notably in Germany.

Planographic printing: when the image is produced using in grease-based inks. The most common method of planographic printing is the lithograph. The lithographic method was invented by Alois Senefelder in 1798

Screen printing: when an image is created on a porous surface (traditionally, frabric, as a silk screen) and transferred using stencil processes. The handprints of the earliest cave-art might be considered the first stencils; the process began to be used in art in about 500 BC in Japan, but had largely utilitarian uses until the late 19th c/early 20th c.

Digital imaging: obviously, a new art process, the product of the computer age, a process allowing the manipulation of the image in digital form.

Printing as a technique for reproducing patterns, text and images originated in ancient China, first to print textiles, later paper. As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to before 220, and from Egypt to the 4th century. Printing of text and image arose later: About 593 A.D. the first printing press was invented in China, and the first printed newspaper was available in Beijing in 700 A.D. And the Diamond Sutra, the earliest known complete woodblock printed book with illustrations was printed in China in 868 A.D.

The woodcut is typically on a plank of wood cut with the wood grain. A wood engraving is a variant, cutting an image or pattern into a cross-grain slice of wood (or of several slices bound together). Woodengraving on very dense wood slices (boxwood for example) allows a finer, more detailed image than the ‘softer’ lateral wood planks used in a woodcut. In the 20th c. artists found other platforms suitable for use, particularly linoleum blocks: a still softer platform than a wood plank, producing a linocut.

An engraving is an image cut into a metal plate using a sharp tool. The earliest and often finest engravings were on copper, but copper wears quickly in the printing process. A method of engraving in a steel plate, which allows for finer detail and many more impressions than does copper, was developed by Thomas Lupton in 1822. The engraver uses different tools to cut the image, to achieve different effects.

A drypoint engraving is one on which the plate is left unburnished, with its engraving burr intact. When an engraving is finished, it is usually polished and smoothed down (burnished) before printing, to clean off the shavings (and any incidental scratches) in the engraving process. One of the options available to an engraver is to leave the burr created alongside the engraved line. In the printing, the burr retains extra ink, and the printed drypoint line appears richer, velvety and darker.

A mezzotint is a variant of engraving where the plate is first thoroughly and evenly pitted (which would thus print black); an image is created by smoothing the rough surface. Working from dark to light, the smoothed portions print lighter and lighter as the surface is reworked. Because it is difficult to make a clean line in pure mezzotint, etching will often be used to create a skeleton image and to emphasize central figures. Mezzotint is known for the luxurious quality of its tones: first, because an evenly, finely roughened surface holds a lot of ink, allowing deep solid colors to be printed; secondly because the process of smoothing the texture with burin, burnisher and scraper allows fine gradations in tone to be developed.

Etching is a process is believed to have been invented by Daniel Hopfer (circa 1470-1536) of Augsburg, Germany for decorating armor. Applied to printmaking, an etching is made by drawing a design on a coated plate; the coating is called the ‘ground.’ When the plate is immersed in an acid bath, the coating protects the plate (which thus prints white) but exposes the drawn lines to the acid, which “bites” the lines into the plate. Various tonal effects can be achieved by using different tools to create the image, by shorter and longer “bites,” by recovering portions to stop further biting in a certain area. When the biting is finished, the plate is cleaned, then printed.

An aquatint is a variant etching processing using a rosin in the ground which can be set on the plate by ‘cooking.’ The rosin-ground can then be burnished or scratched out to achieve tonal effects over larger areas of the plate.

A soft-ground etching is another variant, using a soft wax coating between the plate and a piece of paper. After the image is drawn on the paper, the paper is removed; the drawn line is usually ‘softer’ in effect as some of the wax comes away with the paper but some remains on the plate. The impression when bitten and printed is of a crayon or conté pencil line.

Lithography exploits the uses of grease and water. A smooth, porous stone surface (litho- means stone in Greek) is used as the platform, usually limestone. An image is drawn on the stone using grease-based pencils and other media. After the image is set, the stone is wetted but only that not covered by the grease-based image retains the water. Oil ink is then applied: it is repelled by the water-soaked portion but adheres to the grease-based image. A sheet of dry paper is pressed on the surface, and the inked image is transferred to the paper.

Because a stone is heavy and cumbersome, other platforms have been found: aluminum and zinc are used, but usually do not produce as fine an image as a traditional stone. The transfer-lithograph was developed as an early alternative to stone lithography, necessarily confined to a studio. Using transfer-lithography, an artist can use a special paper to create an image, which it then transferred to stone for treating and printing. A modern variant, mylar lithography¸ uses a photo process to fix the image, drawn on mylar, to aluminum or zinc plates, and produces an image comparable to traditional stone lithography.