What Is Printmaking?

Printmaking is an artistic process based on the principle of transferring images from a matrix onto another surface, most often paper or fabric. Traditional printmaking techniques include woodcut, etching, engraving, and lithography, while modern artists have expanded available techniques to include screenprinting.

Printmaking Techniques Explained: What exactly is an ‘original print’?

The term ‘original print’ can be a confusing one, not helped by the frequent use of the word ‘print’ when referring to mass reproductions.

Put simply, an original print is an image that has been transferred by hand from one surface to another. The image is drawn, etched or engraved into a surface such as a plate, block or stone, which is then inked up and printed by hand, transferring the image onto paper. There will typically be a small number of this same impression produced, and always in a limited edition; the number of prints in an edition is fixed and cannot be added to later down the line. Original prints are not a reproduction of an original – each numbered print is an individual, handcrafted part of the whole edition, each ever so slightly different from the last.

Printmaking with artist Helen Gotlib

A life time commitment to art has led Helen to a career as a full time fine artist. Over many years, including study at the University Of Michigan School Of Art & Design and Kyoto Seika University, she has developed a detail oriented style incorporating drawing, printmaking and mixed media processes. Much of her work has been focused on the life cycle of flora. She has created images of unexpected beauty and emotional power by particularly focusing her attention on dried, dead flowers.

The rules of printmaking have been defined by the medium’s masters and the limitations of its tools. Gotlib pushes the boundaries of printmaking in terms of scale, presentation and process, proving that there are no rules, only spaces within which to innovate. She uses a small press to make uncommonly large prints, raw commercial materials to render images with the care and patience of a master craftsperson and presents it in a way that brings her work out of the 1600s and into today’s white wall art spaces. Gotlib’s unorthodox approach to a traditional medium is balanced by adhering closely to her subject. Mystified by the gradual changes in terrain and flora that occur across seasons and agricultural zones she is inspired by interactions with nature that occur during her frequent travels and daily adventures in the Michigan woods. She patiently and unvaryingly transfers her impressions of these encounters on to the blocks and plates that add up to the contemporary print based work she produces.

Watch this short video to see Helens’ unique process.