Drawing engraving 28th November

Engraving   28th November

With today being the first day of printing, we started off with a talk on the processes we will be doing over the next three weeks. There are many different materials and ways to engrave.

Woodcut is the earliest printmaking technique, and the only one traditionally used in the Far East. It was probably first developed as a means of printing patterns on cloth, and by the 5th century was used in China for printing text and images on paper. Woodcuts of images on paper developed around 1400 in Europe and slightly later in Japan. These are the two areas where woodcut has been most extensively used, purely as a process for making images without text. The artist draws a sketch either on a plank of wood or on paper which is transferred to the wood. Traditionally the artist then hands the work to a specialist cutter, who uses sharp tools to carve away the parts of the block that he/she does not want to receive the ink. The remaining raised parts of the block are inked with a brayer and then a sheet of paper, perhaps slightly damp, is placed over the block. The block is then rubbed with a baren or spoon, or is run through a press. If in colour, separate blocks are carved and used for each colour. Linocut is a similar process to woodcut, but a block of linoleum is used instead of wood.

Collagraphs are built up in a collage-like process onto a rigid base. The resulting plate is then inked and printed onto paper. Collagraphy is a very free form of printmaking and achieves very vibrant colours and a great depth of tone. Collagraphs can either be relief (where the ink is applied to the upper layers of the plate) or intaglio (ink is applied to the whole plate and then removed from the upper layers, left only in the recesses.)

Drypoint: A variant of engraving, done with a sharp point, rather than a v-shaped burin. While engraved lines are very smooth and hard-edged, drypoint scratching leaves a rough burr at the edges of each line. This burr gives drypoint prints a characteristically soft, and sometimes blurry, line quality. Because the pressure of printing quickly destroys the burr, drypoint is useful only for very small editions; as few as ten or twenty impressions. To counter this, and allow for longer print runs, electro-plating (usually called steelfacing) has been used since the nineteenth century to harden the surface of a plate.

We were taken to the 3D room where the printing would take place and shown how to turn our engravings into prints. It started with placing a piece of paper in some water to soak and while that is happening the ink is placed on the aluminium plate using a fine cloth and then the excess is rubbed off with a clean part of cloth. After the ink is removed the plate is then placed in the printing machine and the paper that was soaking in the water is drained of any excess water and layered on top of the aluminium plate. Finally the whole thing is run through the press and the paper is focused onto the aluminium plate and the ink is imprinted onto the paper.

Having been shown the printing process, it was now time for me to have a go. Using a photo from the cathedral trip of a dragon, I started drawing out the outline using the tracing paper. When I had finished the outline I placed the tracing paper over the carbon paper and layered both over the aluminium plate. Then taking a fine pen I traced over the lines I had already made.

With all the lines pressed onto the aluminium plate, it was now time for the next part of the process which was engraving. I took the metal tool that looked like a pencil and started to scratch away the surface of the aluminium, taking care to plan the areas of light and shadow before I made any marks on the plate. I started with small light lines in one direction for the lighter areas, then going over them in the other direction using the cross hatching technique to create deeper and more texture lines for the shadows. I kept doing this till I had all the different layers I needed for the print.

As it was now the end of the lesson, I would have to finish printing on Monday. This was my first attempt at print making. I enjoyed learning about the different methods you can use to achieve a print.