2. Hand Etching
What is hand etching and how is it used?
What is Hand Etching? Advantages
Hand Etching is where an image or picture is carved out of any form of colour 1. An advantage of hand etching is that when you have
or polishes stone, glass and ceramic tile. People usually use hand etching to mastered the skill of hand etching which is a difficult skill
enhance family memorials, creating wildfire art, portraits, emblems, logos to master you would be earning vast amounts of money
and much more as these are only a few examples of what you can do with for being able to hand etch.
hand etching. This is a creative form of print based media. 2. Hand etching can open a mass of business opportunities
as the skill doesn't revolve around a particular material as
it can be used on a majority of materials therefore being
used in any form that enquirers particularly want hand
etched.
3. Hand etching doesn’t specify in a particular colour or
material so therefore it can be done in various forms as
well as on different materials therefore widening the
market even further than before.
Harley Davidson Disadvantages
Harley Davidson is a clear example of hand etching as the business has 1. A disadvantage of hand etching is that the cost of hand
had their logo carved into polished stone to represent their business and etching is expensive depending on the materials that are to
the aims and objectives of their business. The reasons for Harley be used from the customer and also the equipment and
Davidson promoting their business through hand etching is most training to hand etch also adds up to a substantial sum.
probably because its a creative and imaginative form of print based 2. Another disadvantage of hand etching is that the money and
media and therefore have a more unique outlook on their business just time that it would take which is also crucial time and money
through doing this. that is needed to keep running a hand etching business it
would have been drawn due to the workers and employees
that would need to be trained in the art of hand etching.
3. The time that is takes to create a hand etched piece is
substantial as it needs precision and accuracy instead of just
skimming through it. Also as the customer is paying vast
amounts of money care and detail in the piece is cruical.
3. Intaglio
What is Intaglio and how is it used?
What is Intaglio?
Intaglio derives from the Italian tagliare to cut, it refers to a number
of techniques in art, applied to many different materials, which all
have in common that the image is created by cutting, carving or
engraving into a flat surface, as opposed to a relief. Where the
image is what is left when the background has been cut away to
leave the image apparently lifted up above the background, the
term may also refer to objects made using these techniques.
1. Intaglio printmaking: a group of print making techniques with
an incised image.
2. Intaglio jewellery: similar techniques in jewellery.
3. Intaglio sculpture: is also known as sunken relief.
4. Intaglio burial mound: a similar technique for decorating burial
mounds with geoglyphs.
5. Blythe Intaglio: large native American designs on the ground.
Advantages Disadvantages
1. An advantage of intaglio is that it can be useful in various 1. A disadvantage of intaglio is that it can be a slow and
sections of the market so its open to a wide audience long process which therefore means that there would be
without a specific target market so therefore there are lack in time efficiency which means a lot of important
markets such as printmaking, jewellery, sculpture, burial time would be lost.
mounds etc. 2. Another disadvantage is that the material costs a
2. Another advantage of intaglio is that it can be used for substantial amount of money therefore this create cost
almost anything that the customer particularly has an efficiency as the materials are so expensive and the
interest in. It can be used for various businesses as well as time to create the intaglio means that the cost will be
for personal use. high in comparison to the production time.
4. Linocutis it used?
What is linocut and how
Linocut is a print making technique, a variant of woodcut in which a sheet of linoleum, sometimes mounted on a wooden block, is used for the
relief surface. A design is cut into the linoleum surface with a sharp knife, v shaped chisel or gouge, with raised areas representing a reversal
mirror image of the parts to show printed. The linoleum sheet is linked with a roller and then impressed onto paper or fabric, the actual printing
can be done by hand or with a press.
As the material being carved has no particular direction to its grain and does not tend to split, it is easier to obtain certain artistic effects with lino
than with most woodcuts and engravings. Lino is much easier to cut than wood; especially when heated, but the pressure of the printing process
degrades the plate faster and it is difficult to create larger works due to the materials fragility. Linocuts can also be achieved by the careful
application of sodium hydroxide in a paste to parts of the surface of the lino. This creates a surface similar to a soft ground etching and these
caustic lino plates can be printed in either a relief, intaglio or a viscosity printing manner.
Colour linocuts can be made by using a different block for each colour as in a woodcut, but, as Pablo Picasso demonstrated quite
effectively, such prints can also be achieved using a single piece of linoleum in what is called the reductive print method. Essentially, after each
successive colour is imprinted onto the paper, the artist then cleans the lino plate and cuts away what will not be imprinted for the subsequently
applied colour.
Due to ease of use, linocut is widely used in schools to introduce children to the art of printmaking; similarly, non-professional artists often cut
lino rather than wood for printing. In the modern day art world however, after the input of Picasso and Henri Matisse, the linocut is an
established professional print medium.
Advantages Disadvantages
1. An advantage of linocut is that its used for educational 1. The disadvantages of this particular
purposes which will help children prosper in school and in process is that it is time consuming and
further education. This is also useful because it shows that the materials cost a substantial amount
in a business that creates linocuts can prosper from the of money this means that the production
idea that children use it in their education in their art is slow and that it even costs a lot of
subjects. budget to produce the products.
5. Screen Print
What is screen printing?
• Screen printing is a printing technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil. The attached
stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink or other printable materials which can be pressed through the
mesh as a sharp edged image onto a substrate. A roller or squeegee is moved across the screen stencil, forcing or
pumping ink past the threads of the woven mesh in the open areas.
• Screen printing is also a stencil method of print making in which a design is imposed on a screen of silk or other
fine mesh, with blank areas coated with an impermeable substance, and ink is forced through the mesh onto the
printing surface. It is also known as silkscreen, serigraphy, and serigraph.
6. Woodcut
What is woodcut?
• Woodcut: formally known as xylography: is a relief printing artistic technique in
printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with
the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are
removed, typically with gouges. The areas to show 'white' are cut away with a knife
or chisel, leaving the characters or image to show in 'black' at the original surface
level. The block is cut along the grain of the wood (unlike wood engraving where
the block is cut in the end-grain). In Europe beech wood was most commonly used;
in Japan, a special type of cherry wood was used.
• The surface is covered with ink by rolling over the surface with an ink-covered roller
brayer, leaving ink upon the flat surface but not in the non printing areas.
• Multiple colours can be printed by keying the paper to a frame around the
woodblocks (where a different block is used for each colour. The art of carving the
woodcut can be called "xylography", but this is rarely used in English for images
alone, although that and "xylographic" are used in connection with block
books, which are small books containing text and images in the same block. Single
leaf woodcut is a term for a woodcut presented as a single image or print, as
opposed to a book illustration.
7. Lithography
What is lithography?
• Lithography has also been used for various filmography and other visual things. Lithography originally used an
image drawn in wax or other oily substance applied to a lithographic stone as the medium to transfer ink to the
printed sheet. In modern times, the image is often made of polymer applied to a flexible aluminium plate. The flat
surface of the plate or stone is slightly roughened, or etched, and divided into hydrophilic regions that accept a film
of water and thereby repel the greasy ink, and hydrophobic regions that repel water and accept ink because the
surface tension is higher on the greasier image area which remains dry. The image may be printed directly from
the stone or plate (in which case it is reversed from the original image) or may be offset by transfer to a flexible
sheet, usually rubber, for transfer to the printed article.
• This process is different from gravure or intaglio printing where a plate is engraved, etched or stippled to make
cavities to contain the printing ink, and in woodblock printing and letterpress where ink is applied to the raised
surfaces of letters or images.
• Most books, indeed all types of high volume text, are now printed using offset lithography, the most common form
of printing production. The word "lithography" also refers to photolithography, a micro fabrication technique used to
make integrated circuits and microelectromechanical systems, although those techniques have more in common
with etching than with lithography.
8. Letterpress
What is letterpress?
• Letterpress printing is relief printing of text and image using a press with a "type high bed" printing press and
movable type, in which a reversed, raised surface is inked and then pressed into a sheet of paper to obtain a
positive right reading image. It was the normal form of printing text from its invention by Johannes Gutenberg in
the mid 15th century until the 19th century and remained in wide use for books and other uses until the second
half of the 20th century. In addition to the direct impression of inked movable type onto paper or another receptive
surface, letterpress is also the direct impression of inked printmaking blocks such as photo etched zinc "cuts"
plates, linoleum blocks, wood engravings, etc., using such a press.
• In the 21st century, commercial letterpress has been revived by the use of 'water wash' photopolymer plates that
are adhered to a near type high base to produce a relief printing surface typically from digitally rendered art and
typography.
9. Gravure
What is Gravure?
• Rotogravure is a type of intaglio printing process, that is, it involves engraving the image onto an image carrier. In
gravure printing, the image is engraved onto a copper cylinder because, like offset and flexography, it uses a
rotary printing press.
• The vast majority of gravure presses print on rolls of paper, rather than sheets of paper. Rotary gravure presses
are the fastest and widest presses in operation, printing everything from narrow labels to 12 feet, 4 mm wide rolls
of vinyl flooring. Additional operations may be in line with a gravure press, such as saddle stitching facilities for
magazine brochure work. Once a staple of newspaper photo features, the rotogravure process is still used for
commercial printing of magazines, postcards, and corrugated product packaging.
10. Photocopying
What is Photocopying?
• A photocopier is a machine that makes paper copies of documents and other visual images quickly and cheaply.
Most current photocopiers use a technology called xerography, a dry process using heat.
• Xerographic office photocopying was introduced by Xerox in 1959, and it gradually replaced copies made by
Verifax, Photostat, carbon paper, mimeograph machines, and other duplicating machines. The prevalence of its
use is one of the factors that prevented the development of the paperless office heralded early in the digital
revolution.
• Photocopying is widely used in business, education, and government. There have been many predictions that
photocopiers will eventually become obsolete as information workers continue to increase their digital document
creation and distribution, and rely less on distributing actual pieces of paper.
11. Laser Printing
What is Laser Printing?
• A laser printer is a common type of computer printer that rapidly produces high quality text and graphics on plain
paper. As with digital photocopiers and multifunction printers, laser printers employ a xerographic printing process
but differ from analogy photocopiers in that the image is produced by the direct scanning of a laser beam across
the printer's photoreceptor. A laser beam projects an image of the page to be printed onto an electrically charged
rotating drum coated with selenium or, more common in modern printers, organic photoconductors.
Photoconductivity removes charge from the areas exposed to light. Dry ink particles are then electrostatically
picked up by the drum's charged areas. The drum then prints the image onto paper by direct contact and
heat, which fuses the ink to the paper.
• Unlike impact printers, laser printer speed can vary widely, and depends on many factors, including the graphic
intensity of the job being processed. The fastest models can print over 200 monochrome pages per minute. The
fastest colour laser printers can print over 100 pages per minute. Very high speed laser printers are used for mass
mailings of personalized documents, such as credit card or utility bills, and are competing with lithography in some
commercial applications.
• The cost of this technology depends on a combination of factors, including the cost of paper, toner, and infrequent
drum replacement, as well as the replacement of other consumables such as the fuser assembly and transfer
assembly. Often printers with soft plastic drums can have a very high cost of ownership that does not become
apparent until the drum requires replacement.
• In comparison with the laser printer, most inkjet printers and dot matrix printers simply take an incoming stream of
data and directly imprint it in a slow lurching process that may include pauses as the printer waits for more data. A
laser printer is unable to work this way because such a large amount of data needs to output to the printing device
in a rapid, continuous process. The printer cannot stop the mechanism precisely enough to wait until more data
arrives, without creating a visible gap or misalignment of the dots on the printed page.
12. Inkjet
What is Inkjet?
• An inkjet printer is a type of computer printer that creates a digital image by propelling variable-sized droplets of
ink onto paper. Inkjet printers are the most commonly used type of printer and range from small inexpensive
consumer models to very large professional machines.
• The concept of inkjet printing originated in the 19th century, and the technology was first developed in the early
1950s. Starting in the late 1970s inkjet printers that could reproduce digital images generated by computers were
developed, mainly by Epson, Hewlett Packard and Canon. In the worldwide consumer market, four manufacturers
account for the majority of inkjet printer sales: Canon, HP, Epson, and Lexmark, a 1991 spin-off from IBM. The
emerging ink jet material deposition market also uses inkjet technologies, typically piezoelectric crystals, to deposit
materials directly on substrates.
13. DTP
What is DTP?
• Desktop publishing combines a personal computer and page layout software to create publication documents on a
computer for either large scale publishing or small scale local multifunction peripheral output and distribution.
• The term "desktop publishing" is commonly used to describe page layout skills. However, the skills and software
are not limited to paper and book publishing. The same skills and software are often used to create graphics for
point of sale displays, promotional items, trade show exhibits, retail package designs and outdoor signs.
14. Screen Process
What is Screen Process?
• The fourth traditional type of printing, screen process, includes silk screen and has special applications in the
printing industry. Silk screen printing is a form of stencil printing, i.e., printing where the ink is applied to the back of
the image carrier and pushed through porous or open areas. The image is on a piece of silk stretched on a frame
and backed by a rubber squeegee containing ink. The nonprinting areas on the silk screen are blocked out, and
the ink is pushed through the porous areas corresponding to the design; the process is widely used for posters
and for printing on glass, plastics, and textured surfaces. Mimeographing is another commercial application of
stencil printing.
