MONOPRINT / MONOTPYE
Monotype is the most immediate of the printing techniques. The process has been used by painters and printmakers alike as a way of expressing ideas quickly and easily.
It involves painting directly onto a non-porous surface such as an acrylic plate with an oil-based or water-based ink. Any sort of mark can be made, using all sorts of tools as well as the conventional paintbrush. The surface can be worked into and ink can be applied and rubbed off in places.
The design can be both precise and quite bold and expressive. In fact monotype is recognised for the amount of freedom that it gives to the artist. The printing of the plate onto paper can be done simply placing paper over the inked plate and carefully rubbing the back with your hand, a soft cloth, or a small roller. The process is ideal for enabling participants to understand the basic principles of any printmaking technique.
ETCHING AND ENGRAVING (INTAGLIO)
In terms of physical character, intaglio forms of printmaking are the reciprocal of relief processes. Ink is forced into the recesses, lines and lower areas of the printing plate and the top, relief surfaces are wiped clean. The print is made by passing the plate and paper through a high pressure roller press, the purpose of which is to pull the ink out of the recesses in the plate and onto the usually dampened paper.
The two best known intaglio techniques are etching and engraving although the blanket headings represent long, complex and interrelated histories both in technical and social terms. Etching involves the use of acids to corrode designs into metal plates, engraving the cutting of marks into the surface of, most commonly, copper, zinc and steel plates. Engraving involves incising the plate with a burin or echoppe, but no chemicals are used.
A third method, drypoint, is also carried out on copper and zinc. In drypoint the line is gouged straight into the plate, no acid is used. The ink is held in the burr created on the surface of the plate. For introductory work, engraving can be carried out on plastic plates. Most forms of intaglio work are limited by the essential use of a high pressure roller press (copperplate press).
VISCOSITY COLOUR PRINTING
Viscosity colour etching is a process which enables the printmaker to achieve the means to print two or three colours on an etched plate simultaneously.
A thick etching plate is bitten over a long period of time to create a range of depths. In between each long bite the plate may be ‘stopped out’ in certain areas to prevent further ‘biting’ on those particular parts; or left to continue the ‘deep bite’. The plate is then scraped to remove any jagged edges that could damage rollers, printing paper and printing blankets.
The plate may have an intaglio ink applied, that goes in the lines or grooves.
The inks that are used for viscosity are mixed up to varying degrees of oiliness and transparency, i.e. runnier or stiffer. These colours are rolled out with large rollers that can cover the plate with one rotation thus applying only one layer of ink at a time. According to the order of application, the series of ink layers that are applied will either mix or repel (like oil and water). Reversing the order of application will produce a completely different coloured image.
The process was developed this century by Stanley William Hayter at his studio named Atelier 17 and by Krishna Reddy, one of his pupils. Its method has been handed down at Oxford Printmakers via one of Hayter’s pupils.
It is a process which is fairly complex to grasp but which can produce some remarkable results.
RELIEF PRINTING (LINOCUT, WOODCUT AND WOOD ENGRAVING)
The term “relief” refers to any process in printmaking where a printed image is taken from the top surface of a block or plate and the non-print areas are at a lower level. The most common forms of relief printing are linocut, woodcut and wood engraving. With these techniques the block is cut away to leave the top surfaces to be rolled or dabbed with ink, the print being taken by rubbing the back of the printing paper onto the block or by putting them through a press. It is of great advantage that a press is not essential equipment for the achievement of results rich in colour and texture.
The woodcut first appeared in Europe in the thirteenth century, being used initially for stamping designs onto textiles and then mainly for popular and religious imagery. Linocutting is a twentieth century development, is the most accessible and technically the most simple of the relief processes and commonly used by children in schools as well as by professional artists. Wood engraving has a strong association with illustration and can be more tight in style than woodcutting.
COLLAGRAPH
The word collagraph is derived from the Greek “colla”, meaning “glue” and “graphos” to “write”. The collagraph is a simple and direct method of printmaking, which can produce marks and textures similar to that of an etching. Cardboard or hardboard is used as a base, and the image is created by either adding materials to the surface of the plate, or by cutting into the board to produce an intaglio effect.
A collage of different materials such as lace, feathers, textured wallpapers and other found objects can be fixed to the card with glue, the glue itself can be used as a drawing medium. Carborundum or sand sprinkled on the wet glue will provide an aquatint-like surface with considerable variations of tone.
When the image is complete, coats of varnish are applied over the plate, giving a tough non-absorbent finish.
The plate is ready to print, and ink is worked over the surface, either by using a dabber or roller. It can be treated as a relief or non-relief surface The paper is then placed over the plate, and pressure applied over the surface. This can be achieved either by hand-burnishing with a spoon or roller or by running it through an etching press. The plate has a limited life because it is made of cardboard!
CARBORUNDUM PRINTING
A carborundum print is made from a mineral grit (used in stone lithography processing) called carborundum. It comes in different grades (fine to coarse) and can be applied by glue to a card support. When printed, it creates very textured, often dark and dense areas. It works well with smaller print runs. Some artists use carborundum in conjunction with or as part of a collagraph.
SCREENPRINTING (SILK-SCREEN, SERIGRAPHY)
Screenprinting is essentially a stencilling process. It was developed early this century in the United States, but the roots of the technique originate from decorative stencilling used on buildings and ceramics in ancient Egypt and China, then developed in a more sophisticated form by the Japanese. The technology of commercial screenprinting is now very complex, covering a very wide range of application, but the medium can be used quite easily to produce results that are rich in terms of texture and colour.
The essence of the process is that a fluid type of printing ink is ‘squeegeed’ onto a printing surface through a porous fabric which has been stretched taut on a frame. An image or design is created by attaching some form of stencil to the mesh of the fabric thereby blocking the passage of ink and creating the negative or non-print areas. Stencils may be made of cut, brushed or photosensitive materials. Since the ink is laid down in relatively even and fluid fields, colour effects can be particularly strong. Screenprinting is often used for printing posters. Another advantage of the medium is that printing can be achieved on a wide variety of surface, such as fabric, plastic, glass, ceramics and leather as well as on all types of paper.
More recently waterbased or ‘safe’ methods are being used as opposed to oil based materials which are extremely toxic.
LITHOGRAPHY
Lithography is a ‘chemical’ printing process, developed by Aloys Senefelder in 1798. It was a form of printing taken up by many of the great artists of the following century; from Goya, Gericault and Delacriox to Munch, Lautrec and Picasso. In conjunction with the master printmakers of their day, they produced many powerful works through this medium.
Lithography is a ‘planographic’ form of printmaking. This means the print is made from a stone or metal plate which is totally flat. There are no differing levels involved, rather the printing process is based on the principle that water and grease do not mix. The artist uses a greasy ink or crayon to draw an image and this is treated chemically. This treatment, called an ‘etch’ causes the greasy image to attract ink and repel water, while the clean, non-image area does the opposite. The original drawing is washed out with turpentine, but is picked up again once the surface is rolled up in ink. Each time the inked image is run through the press a print is created.
The artist may use washes, pencils, crayons or pens, as well as introducing interesting textures with the use of turpentine or salt. However, the attraction of lithography is its simplicity and directness. What the artist draws on the stone or plate is what will print on the paper.
POCHOIR PRINTING
Pochoir is the French word for stenciling, a form of colouring pictures that dates to a thousand years ago in China. It was introduced to commercial publishing in France in the late 1800s.
The pochoir process would use from 20 to 250 different stencils applied to a black-and-white collotype print from a photograph.
The collotypes are affixed to stencil sheets of metal or board, and the patches to be coloured are cut out. Each colour to be applied uses a separate pompon, or brush of coarse, shortly-cropped animal hair, to sponge or dab on the paint. Each stencil is done in turn until the image is finished, so it is essential to place the stencils exactly in position.
Though pochoir illustration had its heyday in the 1920s, with Paris as its centre of greatest artistic production, several places produced pochoir books during this decade, including London, Florence, New York, and the avant-garde publishers of Prague and other Eastern European cities. In the United States, pochoir gave way quite early to related methods like serigraphy and silk-screening. Occasionally today some fine press books are illustrated using the pochoir method, but its most sumptuous flowering eight decades ago represents a remarkable era in the history of the book.
It can be adapted for simpler printing, and used in conjunction with other processes such as screenprint, woodcut and etching, to add small areas of flat colour such as with a small roller or soft brush. Some artists still employ it as a stand alone process.