Terms of Art, so to speak...

I wanted to give you the basics on the more common printmaking terms.. especially important since I toss them about on this site, and if you're not familiar with them, you could be wondering what it is all about. So here's a quick printing primer:

There are a few major groups of printmaking..they are relief, intaglio, silkscreen, planography (lithography and monotypes), and the combination of relief and intaglio found in collagraphs.

Relief  There are many kinds of relief prints.. everything from detailed wood engravings, to linoleum prints, to images carved in rubber or potatoes to stamp. Any area you do not want to print is carved away. What is left you ink and print on paper. Because relief images for the most part do not carry tonal gradations well, relief prints often have a wonderful wonderful graphic quality to them. Relief prints can often be pulled by rubbing on the back of the paper with a spoon or baren. I prefer a press, though... especially when doing 30 or so at a time!

Intaglio  This is the reverse of relief printing. Areas are removed from a plate as in relief printing, but with intaglio, with its fine lines and tones, instead of pulling ink from the surface, ink is pressed into the recessed lines of a plate. Excess ink is wiped off the surface. Damp paper is pushed hard into the plate through a printing press. Through this pressure, the damp paper reaches into the incised lines and pulls the inked image out of the plate. There are different kinds of intaglio.

• Drypoint The lines in a plate are made by directly scratching the image into the plate with a very sharp tool. Both the line and the burr that is raised from the scratching hold the ink. Plates can be copper, zinc or even acrylic. Because the raised burrs are delicate, drypoint prints cannot give as many prints as other kinds of intaglio. Drypoints have a slightly fuzzy quality and can give you rich deep lines.
• Etching This process etches images into copper or zinc plates. While some printers use nitric acid, many use a slower biting but safer kind of etchant called ferric chloride. There are also newer less toxic processes such as light senstive film or solar plates.  Each method gives slightly different result, and because of this the manner in which a plate is etched is an important part of the personal choices a printer makes in creating the look he or she wants. For my prints, I cover a degreased copper plate with a waxy ground made up of asphaltum, resin, beeswax and thinner. I then scratch through the waxy ground with an etching needle to draw the area that will be exposed to the etchant. After completing my drawing, I put the plate in a bath of ferric choride to etch. If I want to add tonal qualities to the plate, I may decide to also do a aquatint or softground.
• Aquatint Tone can be given to a plate by dusting it with a fine rosin powder and heat fusing it to the plate, or spraying the plate with an enamel paint. The longer you etch an area the darker it becomes. A plate can have many different levels of tone added in this manner.
• Softground Like the name says, a softer waxy ground is used that can have softer lines or textures pressed into it that can then be etched. Fabric, string, leaves and grasses can all be used for texture.

Collagraph  Although usually not its own category, I think it is neither fish nor fowl.. or perhaps it would be accurate to call both fish and fowl.  Images can be applied and pulled in both relief and intaglio fashion. Collagraphs are often built on masonite or matboard plates with materials glued to the plate that can give different textures to the final image. The basic principle is simple - smooth or glossy areas hold less ink when the plate is wiped, and rougher areas will hold more ink and give it tone. Though earlier artists had used constructed plates and use of carborundum in plate-making, the process was heavily explored and promoted by Glen Alps. He coined the term 'collagraph' since the plate is made by collaging elements together. Collagraphs can give wonderful textures both directly from an inlaid item (you can see images of fabric or plants in some of my prints) or through adding rough grit to acrylic medium to give some tooth to an area you want to print.

Silkscreen  Areas of a screen, through use of stencils of liquid frisket are blocked. Ink is then squeeged over the screen to make an image.

Lithography   This kind of printing creates images through creating a drawing on a surface that can both attract and repel ink. The areas that you want to print are drawn on a stone (hence the 'litho') , aluminum plate with a waxy crayon or tusche wash. Areas that you want to repel ink are treated so that when you pass a roller filled with ink over the image surface, only the drawing area picks up the ink. Paper is then laid on the image, run through a press and a print is pulled.

Monotype  A very direct and painterly way of printing. An image is drawn directly on a plate (usually acrylic or copper) with inks or paint, damp paper is laid on, pressure is applied through hand rubbing or being run through a press, and the image is pulled directly off the plate. And, like the name implies, it is unique. There is only one.