AN AGE OLD PRINTMAKING TECHNIQUE
Intaglio (pronounced in-TAH-li-o) means, "carving," in Italian. Intaglio printmaking implies a group of related techniques that involve incising an image into a flat plate surface. The incised areas can hold ink that is then transferable to paper via a relatively high pressure printing press. This procedure is the opposite of relief printmaking as done with wood blocks or linoleum where the image to be transferred to paper directly contacts the paper and may or may not require a printing press for image transfer.
History. Intaglio printmaking dates to the 15th century and includes works of Rembrandt, Durer, Goya, Whistler, Picasso and numerous others.
Disclaimer: The artist uses essentially the same labor intense, centuries old procedure as the above named masters but draws absolutely NO comparison between her work and theirs.
Printing Plates. Intaglio printing plates of smooth copper, zinc, plastic or other hard substance repel ink naturally and produce no image if an attempt is made to print on paper without first roughening the plate's surface. Thus, the artist must "carve" the plate surface to create a transferable image. Remember, this image will be a mirror image of the eventual printed image so the artist draws the image backwards on the plate. The main techniques to accomplish the carving include etching and engraving.
Etching a plate means carving it with a corrosive substance such as acid. The artist coats a smooth plate with an corrosive-resistant substance called ground and then draws an image into the ground. This drawing uncovers bare plate surface that when exposed to the corrosive becomes roughened. In such areas, the plate is capable of holding ink that can move onto paper via the press to create a print.
Aquatint in etching involves placing a fine resin dot screen on the printing plate prior to immersing the plate in the corrosive substance. The tiny dots resist the corrosive and allow prints to acquire shaded as well as linear properties.
Engraving involves mechanically roughening a plate with various tools such as a diamond-tipped pen, sandpaper, carborundum powder or other instruments of direct plate surface alteration. No corrosive liquid is used. Engraving editions tend to be smaller than those of etching since the engraved plate's roughened areas get flattened earlier through the printing process.
Mezzotint is an engraving variant where the plate is entirely physically roughened to create a surface that, if inked and printed, would produce a solid color on paper. This uniform surface is achieved via either a series of closely spaced, incised lines or grinding the plate with an abrasive substance. The artist then re-smooths plate areas to create an image with varying tones--think of an image with 50 shades of gray (the colors, not the book).
Printing. For both etching and engraving, the artist applies ink to the plate, carefully wipes excess ink from the plate's smooth areas so as not to disturb the ink in the incised image and uses an intaglio printing press to transfer the image to paper.
The artist repeats this inking, wiping, and printing process for each individual print. Each print is an original work of art that requires the artist's care to create uniformity from one print to the next. This distinguishes intaglio prints from computer generated giclee reproductions.
Printing a la Poupee. The artist inks the plate with more than one color of ink to create a multi-colored print. Editions printed this way may have slight color variation from one print to the next.
Hand-colored prints. The artist may choose to use watercolor, colored pencils or other means to enhance prints in an edition.
Editions. A collection of prints created one at a time from a single intaglio plate is called an edition. Prints in numbered, limited editions have a fractional number below the image's lower left side. The denominator of this fraction is the total number of prints in the edition, in other words, the total number of times the artist inked, wiped and printed the plate. The numerator denotes the specific print's place in the printing order. Thus, a 5/100 print would designate the fifth print created in an edition limited to 100 prints. A/P denotes, "artist proof," the initial print to which the artist compares each subsequent print.
Monoprint. Occasionally, an artist will create an intaglio plate of a substance such as plastic that does not survive the printing process. Also for various reasons, an artist may choose to create only one print from a plate. Such a single print is designated a monoprint.
