Printmaking History, Processes, and Artists

Printmaking started out as just a practical way of duplicating writing such as religious texts and books. Artists then began to make prints of biblical events and putting them in the religious texts that were being printed. Eventually, artists developed printmaking into its own independent media. Printmaking is still a common form of art today, and is used very often in the fashion industry to create designs.



Types of Printmaking

Lithography: Drawing a design on limestone with a greasy material and then burning the image in with acid, then water is applied to the surface of the limestone, then ink. Ink sticks only to the greasy parts and water only to the non-greasy parts.
Woodcut: Cutting lines and shapes out of a wood surface so that they will not pick up ink when printing, as a result the positive values will be created by the uncut wood.
Engraving: The process of cutting a design into a metal plate, in this method the ink in the etched lines is actually what shows up on paper.
Screen Printing: Creating a stencil, then placing the stencil over a fabric and pushing ink through a screen to transfer the image of the stencil onto the fabric.

Katsushika Hokusai

http://cuadernoderetazos.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/olas-katsushika-hokusai/

Andy Warhol

http://jssgallery.org/other_artists/andy_warhol/campbells_soup_can.htm

Utagawa Hiroshige

http://www.printsofjapan.com/hiroshige_ii.htm