What is Printing?
Printing, or printmaking, is a process and art form using templates, images, plates, cut-outs to mass produce imprints for the purpose of many art pieces (except for monotyping, or single prints). The earliest known form of printing comes from wood-block printing by the Chinese around 220 A.D. Rather than a print, the creation can be known as an impression, where they are created by ink being transferred from a master template to a page of paper.
Materials Needed
For printmaking, materials to create the template are fairly easy to find. Templates can be constructed from cardboard and string, or Styrofoam squares and a sharp pencil. For printing, success can be assured with simple printing mediums like carved potatoes or green gardening foam.
Techniques
RELIEF PROCESSES
“In relief processes, the negative, or nonprinting part of the block or plate, is either cut or etched away, leaving the design standing in relief. Or, instead of cutting away the background, the relief print can be created by building up the printing surface. The relief is the positive image and represents the printing surface. The most familiar relief-printing materials are wood and linoleum, but many other materials can be used, such as aluminum, magnesium, and plastics. Any metal or plastic plate incised or worked in relief can be first inked in the depressions (intaglio inked) and then surface rolled, thus combining relief and intaglio processes.
Relief printing lends itself particularly to a bold conception of design, expressed more in areas than lines. This varies, however, depending on the material used: metal allows more intricate detail than wood, for example.”