Woodcut, etching, lithography and screenprint, printmaking explained
An original print is not a copy of a painting. Here is how the four families of printmaking work, and how to tell them apart with a simple loupe.
Many people assume that a print is a copy of something else. In art, an original print is a work in its own right. The artist creates an image on a , which can be a wooden block, a metal plate, a stone or a screen, and from it pulls a series of impressions on paper. Each impression is an original, and each technique leaves its own fingerprints. This guide explains the main methods and shows you how to recognise them.
Four families, one simple question
Printmaking techniques fall into four families, and one question sorts them: where does the ink sit on the matrix? It can sit on the raised surface, in grooves cut below the surface, on a completely flat surface that has been chemically treated, or it can be pushed through a stencil.
Relief, from woodcut to linocut
In a woodcut the artist cuts away everything that should remain white, using knives and gouges on a plank of wood. Ink is rolled across the raised parts, paper is laid on top and pressed by hand or in a press. Woodcut is among the oldest printing methods, and in Europe it flourished from the fifteenth century. Albrecht Dürer’s Apocalypse, a series of fifteen woodcuts published in 1498, showed how much drama and detail the technique could hold.
In Japan, woodblock printing reached a different kind of perfection. Katsushika Hokusai’s Under the Wave off Kanagawa, dated 1831, comes from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. It was a team effort: the artist made the design, a carver cut the blocks, a printer applied the colours, one block for each, and a publisher financed and sold the prints. Thousands of impressions were made, which is why museums around the world hold copies of the same famous image.
Linocut works the same way, but on linoleum, which is softer and has no grain. It was in use by artists by the early twentieth century. Pablo Picasso showed that a colour print can be made from a single block: print one colour, cut away more of the block, print the next colour on top, and so on until little of the block remains.
Intaglio, lines below the surface
Intaglio comes from the Italian for incising. The image is cut or bitten into a metal plate, usually copper or zinc. Ink is worked into the lines, the surface is wiped clean, and damp paper is forced into the lines under heavy pressure. The edge of the plate leaves a pressed rectangle in the paper called a .
- Engraving: a sharp tool called a burin is pushed through the metal, creating lines that swell and taper. Dürer’s Melencolia I of 1514 is a celebrated example.
- Etching: the plate is coated with an acid resistant ground, the artist draws through it with a needle, and acid bites the exposed lines. Rembrandt made close to 300 etchings, among them the Hundred Guilder Print of around 1648.
- : fine resin powder is fused to the plate and acid bites around the grains, creating areas of tone rather than lines. Francisco Goya’s Los Caprichos, published in 1799, combine etching and aquatint in 80 plates.
- Drypoint: the artist scratches the plate directly with a needle, throwing up a ridge of metal called a that holds ink and gives a soft, velvety line. The burr wears quickly, so only a small number of rich impressions are possible.
Lithography and screenprint
Lithography is based on a simple fact: grease and water repel each other. In the 1790s Alois Senefelder in Bavaria developed a way to draw on fine-grained limestone with a greasy crayon or ink. The stone is dampened, and greasy printing ink sticks only to the drawn areas. Because the surface is flat, a lithograph has no platemark and the ink lies smoothly on the paper. Later, metal plates partly replaced stone, and colour lithography made the bold posters of the late nineteenth century possible.
In a screenprint, also called serigraphy, ink is pressed with a rubber blade, the squeegee, through a fine mesh stretched on a frame. A stencil blocks the areas that should stay clear, and each colour needs its own screen. Photographic stencils made it possible to transfer photographs to the screen, and in 1962 Andy Warhol began using them to repeat images of celebrities and consumer goods. Screenprint gives flat, intense colour with crisp edges.
Giclée, and how to read a print with a loupe
The word was coined in the early 1990s, from a French verb meaning to spray, to describe high quality inkjet prints. Many giclées are reproductions of paintings or drawings. They can be beautiful, but they are made by a printer from a digital file, not by the artist working a block, plate, stone or screen. Some artists make digital works intended as inkjet prints from the start, which is a different matter. Always ask which of the two you are looking at.
A small magnifier, a loupe of about ten times, reveals a great deal:
- A regular pattern of tiny dots, often in rosettes, points to a photomechanical reproduction such as an offset print.
- A fine, irregular spray of very small dots in a few colours suggests an inkjet print.
- A platemark around the image and ink standing slightly proud of the paper indicate intaglio.
- Ink pressed towards the edges of shapes and a slight embossing on the back point to relief.
- Flat ink with a soft grain and no platemark is typical of lithography.
- Thick, flat, opaque layers with sharp edges suggest a screenprint.
Terms in this article
- Matrix
- The block, plate, stone or screen on which a printmaker creates the image and from which impressions are printed.
- Platemark
- The pressed rectangle left in the paper by the edge of a metal plate during intaglio printing.
- Burr
- The ridge of metal thrown up beside a drypoint line, which holds ink and gives a soft, velvety mark.
- Aquatint
- An intaglio technique in which acid bites around fine resin grains on a plate to produce areas of tone.
- Giclée
- A term for high quality inkjet prints, coined in the early 1990s from a French verb meaning to spray.
Readers ask
Is a giclée an original print?
Usually not in the traditional sense. A giclée is a high quality inkjet print, and many are reproductions of existing paintings or drawings. Some artists, however, create digital works intended to be printed this way, and those can be considered original digital prints. Ask the seller exactly what the image is, how it was made and whether the artist supervised and signed the edition.
Why are original prints signed in pencil and numbered?
It has long been standard practice for artists to sign each impression by hand in pencil, below the image, as a sign that they approve it. The number, such as 12/50, shows the impression and the total size of the edition. A signature printed from the plate, by contrast, appears automatically on every sheet and says much less about the artist’s involvement.
What is the difference between a woodcut and a linocut?
Both are relief prints, printed from the raised surface of a block. A woodcut is cut into a plank of wood, so the grain can show in the print and the lines often look slightly angular. Linoleum has no grain and is softer, which allows smooth curves and large flat areas of colour. In the print itself the difference can be subtle.
