Transcript Printing Press

Printmaking
and the
Printing
Press
Ms LeRoy: Grade 11 Art
Albrecht Dürer, St. Jerome in
his Study, engraving, 1514
Basically, printing is the process of making
multiple copies of a document by the use
of movable characters or letters. The
process was developed independently in
China and Europe. Before the invention of
printing, multiple copies of a manuscript
had to be made by hand, a laborious task
that could take many years. Printing made
it possible to produce more copies in a few
weeks than formerly could have been
produced in a lifetime by hand.
Invented by Johannes
Gutenberg in c.1450,
the printing press
made the mass
publication and
circulation of literature
possible.
An operator
worked a lever to
increase and
decrease the
pressure of the
block against the
paper.
Movable type
Printing Types
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Mono printing
Relief printing
Intaglio
Lithography
Serigraphy (stencil screen printing)
Mono Print
A single print
is transferred
from a plate,
which has
been painted
with ink as
opposed to
paint. Only
one print can
be pulled off
the plate.
Howling Wolf by David Dewey
Relief Printing
This is printing from a raised
surface.
A simple example of relief
printing is a rubber stamp
pressed into a stamp pad and
pressed onto a piece of
paper.
Surfaces
Relief printing plates are made from flat
sheets of material such as wood, linoleum,
metal, styrofoam etc. After drawing a
picture on the surface, the artist uses tools
to cut away the areas that will not print.
INKING
A roller - called a brayer - is used to
spread ink on the plate. A sheet of paper is
placed on top of the plate and the image is
transferred by rubbing with the hand or a
block of wood, or by being run through a
printing press. The completed print is a
mirror image of the original plate.
Wood cut (relief printing)
Title: Conjoined
Title: The Great Wave off Kanagawa
Artist: James G. Mundie
Artist: Hokusai
Date: 2002
Date: c. 1825
Contemporary
wood block
• Title: regenerate
• Artist: James Ruddle
• Date: 2003
Multi wood block
• Title: regenerating
smoking Joe
• Artist: James Ruddle
• Date: 2003
Intaglio
This describes prints that are made by cutting
the picture into the surface of the printing plate.
Using a sharp V-shaped tool - called a burin the printmaker gouges the lines of an image
into the surface of a smooth polished sheet of
metal or in some cases a piece of plexiglass. A
variation of this technique - known as
engraving - is etching. With etching, acids are
used to eat into the metal plate.
Richard
Diebenkorn
INKING
To make a print, ink is pushed into the
lines of the design. The surface is then
wiped clean so that the only areas with ink
are the lines. A sheet of paper which has
been soaked in water is then placed on
the plate which is run through a printing
press. The paper is literally forced into the
small lines that have been cut into the
plate.
Intaglio (etching)
Carrier, intaglio w/ hand applied watercolour, 22 ¾
x 55 ¼ inches, edition 33, signed and numbered,
2001
Giorgio Morandi
Lithography
Lithography is a mechanical
planographic process in which
the printing and non-printing
areas of the plate are all at the
same level, as opposed to
intaglio and relief processes in
which the design is cut into the
printing block.
Lithography is based on the chemical repellence of oil and water.
Designs are drawn or painted with greasy ink or crayons on specially
prepared limestone. The stone is moistened with water, which the stone
accepts in areas not covered by the crayon. An oily ink, applied with a
roller, adheres only to the drawing and is repelled by the wet parts of the
stone. The print is then made by pressing paper against the inked
drawing.
Kiki Smith
Left: Audubon
Above and right:
Daumier
Daumier’s Louis-Philippe as
Gargantua (1831) caused
Damier to be imprisoned for 6
months. In it French King
Louis-Phillippe is seated on a
throne before a starving
crowd. The poor are forced to
give up their coins which are
carried up a ramp and fed to
the king.
What are the well-dressed
people doing under the ramp?
What about the others in
front of the Chamber of
Deputies?
Is Daumier a hero?
Serigraphy: silk screen
• A screen is made of a piece of
porous, finely woven fabric
(originally silk, but typically
made of polyester since the
1940s) stretched over a frame
of aluminum or wood. Areas of
the screen are blocked off with
a non-permeable material to
form a stencil, which is a
positive of the image to be
printed; that is, the open
spaces are where the ink will
appear.
Andy Warhol: Marilyn Series
Marilyn Diptych, 1962. Oil, acrylic,
and silk-screen enamel on
canvas.
Andy Warhol,
Brillo Box
Installation,
Acrylic and
silkscreen on
plywood box,
1968