Printmaking

Printmaking is the art of creating images by transferring ink from a prepared surface, a carved wood block, an etched or engraved metal plate, or a stone or screen prepared for the purpose, onto paper or another support, so that the same image can be produced in multiple impressions rather than existing as a single unique object. Its techniques are traditionally grouped by how the printing surface is prepared: relief methods such as woodblock printing, where the areas not meant to print are cut away and ink sits on the raised surface that remains; intaglio methods such as etching and engraving, where the image is incised into a plate and ink is forced into the recessed lines; and planographic methods such as lithography, where image and blank areas share the same flat surface and are separated chemically rather than physically. The Japanese woodblock printmaking tradition of ukiyo-e, pictures of the floating world, developed a highly refined polychrome relief printing process using multiple hand-carved blocks, one for each color, registered precisely against each other, a technique brought to its height by artists including Hokusai in the early nineteenth century.