1. A print is art that’s ink on paper transferred indirectly by pressing something on it.
2. Woodcut, Etching, Lithography, and Screenprint are the 4 major types.
3. The history of each technique: a. The woodcut technique was used very early on in China in the 9th century for stamping designs onto things. Later it was used in Europe where prominent artists used it and it became an important art medium. b. The etching technique was discovered in the 16th century when people learned you could make marks on metal with acid, which was useful enough to become an important part of many famous works. c. The lithography technique was invented by Aloys Senefelder in 1798 and is one of the more direct methods of printmaking. It became more famous in the 1890s with color prints. d. The screenprint technique is a type of stenciling that was developed in the 1930s by American artists who liked the bold look of the art. It became popular in the 1960s due to pop artists, and is also used commercially. 4. How to do each technique: a. For woodcut, you carve out parts of a bock to make a shape raised above the carved away part. You put ink on the raised part and press it onto a paper like a stamp, and the design is copied. b. For etching, you cover a piece of metal in an acid resistant ground and scrape away the parts where you want lines. Put the plate in acid and it will eat away at the exposed lines where you drew and leave the grounded part alone. You then put ink in the lines etched into the metal and press the design onto a paper where the ink is copied over. c. For lithography, use an oil based lithographic crayon to draw an image on limestone, then cover it in a chemical solution that causes the image to attract greasy ink while the blank areas repel the ink and attract water. You dissolve it all away, but a faint image remains. The limestone is then dampened, but only the blank areas absorb the water. You then roll ink onto the stone and the image absorbs it. The stone is pressed onto a paper and the image is copied over to it. d. For screenprint, you cut out the shape you want leaving a silhouette of the image on a piece of plastic or paper. You put the stencil in a screen over a paper and press ink over the paper. The hole in the paper will copy the shape onto the paper. 5. My favorites a. Woodcut: Night Vision by A. R. Penck - the primitive style with the bold contrast and sharp lines is interesting to me. b. Etching: American Landscape by Edward Hopper - it’s impressive that he can add so much detail with just a print, it’s simple but very nice to look at c. Lithography: Untitled by Vija Celmins - it’s just a blank expanse of ocean, but it looks so incredibly real - you’d think it’s a photograph. d. Screenprint: Cityscape by Julian Opie - it’s a city made of only black and white lines and shapes, but is recognizable by the windows and cars that get smaller as you look down the street in the drawing, adding space to the drawing. 6. I found lithography to be very interesting. It’s a very complex multi step process that can make lots of types of art. I wonder how someone came up with it.