A picture carved or etched on wood, stone, linen, copper and zinc plates with a knife or chemicals. In the west, the word printmaking has a broad sense and a narrow sense: in a broad sense, it refers to all paintings except large-scale paintings such as easel oil paintings and murals, such as watercolor paintings, gouache paintings, chalk paintings, sketches, illustrations, posters and cartoons. In a narrow sense, it refers to pictures printed by engraving. The word printmaking commonly used in China is mostly in a narrow sense.

develop

Printmaking has gone through two stages of development, from copying to creation. Early printed matter was made for printing and publishing. Painters, sculptors and printers work together, and the sculptor carves plates only according to the painter's drawings, which is called reproduction printmaking. Later, printmaking gained an independent position in art, and painters, engravers and printers were all appointed by printmakers, so that printmakers could give full play to their artistic creativity. This kind of printmaking is called creating printmaking.

China has a history of 1000 years of copying woodcut prints, which probably happened in Sui and Tang Dynasties at the earliest. Xian Tong's (868) woodcut "Diamond Sutra" frontispiece painting in the late Tang Dynasty. Now it seems that in the middle of the 9th century, China's woodcut reproduction printmaking has reached a quite skilled level. As an independent artistic creation, printmaking has long existed in the west. In Europe, Diu Lei copied ink painting with copperplate and woodcut prints in16th century. By Rembrandt in the17th century, copperplate prints had developed from engraving to corrosion and entered the stage of creating prints. Woodblock prints were created by Bivic in the19th century with white lines as the main intaglio method, and got rid of the fetters of reproduction and entered the field of prints. China's prints were initiated by Lu Xun in 1930s, and have made great progress in just over 50 years. Types and techniques are divided into relief, intaglio, lithography and hole carving. From the material point of view, there are woodcut, hemp carving, stone carving, brick carving, paper carving, gypsum carving and so on. In gravure printing, there are metal (mainly copper and zinc) printing, celluloid printing, paper printing and so on. In lithography, there are lithographs, single prints and so on. Among the hole prints, there are screen prints and paper hole prints. Due to the different materials used, different carving tools and methods, the characteristics of various prints have been produced; Moreover, due to the creativity of various printmakers and the skills of block printing (mainly handprints), the forms of printmaking art are more colorful.

relief printing

(Germany) On the plane of the relief print of Diu Lei's Four Horsemen, the blank part of the draft was cut with a knife, leaving an image part; The part left by the layout (that is, the part without carving) is raised, so it is called relief. Relief prints are mainly woodcuts carved from other materials, also known as relief prints. There are many materials that can be used as relief, such as wood, stone, brick, hemp (or plastic) and so on. Wood used for wood carving varies from place to place, and it is generally appropriate to have moderate hardness and fine texture. China ancient and modern woodcut prints are all longitudinal sections of carved wood, which are called woodcuts. Some woodcuts in the west require careful carving, so the section of solid wood is called mukou woodcut. Hemp offset was originally a building material for paving floors. China printmakers seldom use hemp gum prints.

Create printed matter

(China) Tan Quanshu's "Meng Gen Ziggy" engraving letterpress prints are made of triangular knives, round knives, flat knives and oblique knives. A big round knife and a flat knife are called chisels, and chisels are tools for striking hard behind the handle. As for wood carving, a special solid steel bar is used to create various blades. Wood carving must be done with a magnifying glass. Creating woodcuts with a knife instead of a pen is not like copying woodcuts with strokes. You should pay attention to the technique of cutting, just as calligraphy and painting pay attention to brushwork. Depiction, contrary to painting, is to carve white lines (or blocks) on the black ground. Only by mastering this feature can printmakers make woodcut features different from strokes. Moreover, carving with a sharp knife on hard wood will naturally produce the smell of stone, which is the knife smell and wood smell on wood carving. Woodcarvers are good at using and exerting the characteristics of woodcut, which can be called creating woodcut prints. As for prints, they must be printed before they can be completed, and handprint prints have many printing skills and become an integral part of printmakers' artistic creation. Generally speaking, woodcut printing can be divided into mimeograph and watermark. The former uses oily ink and the latter uses water-based pigment; It is more difficult to print watercolor than oil paint. The same is true of color matching woodcuts.

The traditional watermarking method in China has a history of more than 300 years. At the end of Ming Dynasty, Hu invented □, which was the beginning of traditional watermarking method. Different from the traditional method, the watermark color matching method created by modern woodcut no longer uses □ plates, but engraves various color plates on several plates with the same size, each plate is engraved with the same color matching mark, and then overprints the marks one by one. This method can make the printmaker have a sense of the overall situation (full picture), lay out color plates and create the final effect of overprinter. Therefore, printmakers need to consider all the conditions of overprinter when designing overprinter, and can't just look at the plate alone. When printing, you should choose hand-made paper with good water absorption. Wet the paper with water first, which should be mastered by the printmaker with his own experience. Too much water and too dry is not good. The degree of paper wetting often directly affects the printing effect. The color can be transparent or opaque, and its transparency can be increased or decreased according to the thickness of the color used. As for one color, it can be printed in different shades on a plate, and two colors can be superimposed to produce a third color, which is very varied.

Watermark woodcut

(China) Luo's Storm on the Peak uses other materials as plates to carve relief prints. The basic method is the same as woodcut, except that when carving stones and bricks, a chisel is used as an auxiliary tool, and other materials other than woodcut cannot be watermarked.

Gravure carving

Gravure printing, contrary to relief, is to carve concave lines on the plane of the plate. When the ink rolls, the image of black and white lines can be printed. Polished metal plates do not absorb ink. The ink in copperplate prints can be gently wiped with a cloth, but if the layout is scratched, the ink will stay there. Modern gravure printing plates are mainly copper and zinc, and sometimes iron or steel. The carving method is as follows:

① Line engraving, one of the oldest intaglio engraving methods, uses a strong and sharp knife to carve lines on the copper plate. The carved lines are bright and sharp. The layout can be carved very delicately. In the past, paper money was engraved in this way, and now a few stamps are engraved in this way.

Gravure printing: (Germany) Korwitz's maternal love.

(2) Dry engraving method, which directly engraves words on the copper layout with a needle, and the lines engraved are different from the line engraving method. The needle tip only cuts through the layout, and there are copper thorns beside the line. Therefore, when the layout is inked, the copper scraps also contain ink, and the edges of the printed lines have light ink like fluff, which makes the visual effect soft and beautiful.

(3) Corrosion method, in which a preservative is coated on the layout of copper, zinc, steel and other materials that can be corroded by acid. The main components of the preservative are asphalt, rosin and beeswax. Then carve an image on it with a needle. Wherever the needle goes, the preservative is scraped off, exposing the page. Finally immersed in nitric acid solution, the exposed part was corroded. Due to the different etching time and concentration of nitric acid solution, the depth and thickness of etched lines are also different. Corroded prints are generally etched layer by layer for many times, so the colors are very rich and the levels are very clear, which is the most commonly used plate-making method for gravure printing.

(4) piping, piping format must be made of shaking chisel. This is a round steel chisel with sharp and dense teeth. Shake it with your hand, and the layout will be completely punctured and covered with spots. Rolling ink prints velvet black. Then scrape the page with a scraper (that is, full of copper thorns), gently scrape it to dark gray, then scrape it to light gray, and repeatedly scrape it to white without scraping it all black.

⑤ Relief method makes a part of the layout corroded deeply and has a large corrosion area, but instead of rolling ink on it, it is directly imprinted on a gravure press, and the paper will present a relief colorless pattern. This method is generally only suitable for local use.

⑥ Flying dust method, flying dust corrosion is used to make various shades of gray surfaces. First, a flying dust box must be built, which is equipped with a hand fan, and then the polished copper plate is put into the box. There is a lot of rosin powder in the box. Turn off the fan, and rosin powder will fly in the box and slowly and evenly fall on the page. When the author thinks it is appropriate, take out the copper plate covered with rosin powder and bake it on the electric furnace. Rosin powder melts after heating, gathers into countless dots, and condenses into a film after cooling. After the copper plate with rosin film was immersed in nitric acid solution for corrosion, it was printed in gray composed of spots. The depth of gray depends on the thickness of rosin powder, film thickness and corrosion time. The author treated the flying dust method according to his own artistic conception and achieved the required effect.

⑦ Soft grinding method: A preservative made of asphalt, rosin and beeswax is fixed on the layout to form a hard film, and a proper amount of sheep fat is added to the preservative to soften the film. After rolling the soft ground on the layout, cover a piece of paper, draw it on the back of the paper with a pencil, uncover the paper, and suck the soft ground where there is a pen path, and the copper surface will be exposed on the board, and the nature of its lines is exactly the same as that drawn with a pencil. You can also use some physical objects, such as textiles, mesh patterns, leaves, paper balls, threads, etc. Printed on soft ground, and the image of the object can be transferred to paper after corrosion.

(8) Photographic method: firstly, the photosensitive liquid is dissolved in the preservative and coated on the layout, then a black-and-white film positive is taken, pasted on the layout, exposed under strong light, and then washed with a special solution. At this point, the part of the floor covered by the black film gradually melts, exposing the layout, while the photosensitive part is reinforced and painted on the printed matter, and then normal corrosion can be carried out. Nitric acid solution can only corrode the exposed parts of the page, making it dark black. If the place left by the ground is not corroded, it will be white, which is revealed by photography.

Pet-name ruby method, on several copper plates with the same size, several color separation plates are made by flying dust corrosion method. The printmaker decided to print the color swatch first, and then the color swatch. When printing plates on the machine, first put a thick paper under the copper plate and stick this paper on the machine. Carefully take out the copper plate after printing and leave the paper pad on the machine. At this time, you can clearly see the traces left by the first impression on the pad, and then the lustful second set is carefully embedded in this trace. At this time, the edge of the paper printed with 1 time is still pressed under the upper cylinder of the printing machine, and only the part leaving the cylinder can be exposed. Then carefully put down the paper with 1 printed on it, cover it on the second edition, and shake the drum to accurately overprint the second edition. All other versions are the same.

lithography

Mainly lithographs. Lithography was introduced to China in the middle of19th century, when it was only used to replace woodcut printing books. The method of making lithographs is relatively simple. The slate used is a pure and delicate limestone with many pores, so it has water absorption. Based on the principle of oil-water repulsion, oil crayons are used to draw on the stone layout. After the painting is fixed, wet the layout with a rag. The crayons are water-repellent and can absorb ink. Roll up the ink and fill the painting place with ink, so that the painting can be printed on paper. Printed lithographs can be polished and reused. There are two ways to grind the plate: one is to polish it with grindstone and water to make the layout flat as a mirror, which is called mirror plate. One is to add emery grinding to make the layout rough, such as drawing paper, which is called rough edition. Because of the author's different requirements, we can choose different thicknesses of emery to polish different layout applications. Generally, No.320 emery is the finest and No.80 emery is the coarsest. There are three plate-making methods:

① Painting method of medicine ink stick: medicine ink stick is suitable for painting on rough slate, or it can be used instead of special aluminum pen to make painting paper on glass, metal and ceramics. It takes exactly the same time as drawing on paper.

(2) Brush painting, that is, changing the medicine ink stick into water-soluble ink, dipping it with a brush, and painting on the mirror plate is exactly the same as painting on paper.

(3) Copying: Prepare a special copy paper, draw a picture on it with a medicinal ink stick or brush, and then stick it on a stone plate, and melt the mucosa on the copy paper with water to make the picture stick on the stone plate. All methods of making lithographs should be etched with dilute nitric acid, and then sealed with glue to fix the medicine ink on the page. When printing, first wet the layout, then roll the ink, then cover it with paper and print it by lithography. Color lithographs are marked on the layout and overprinted one by one.

Single printed matter

This is also a kind of lithography. The manufacturing method is simple. Draw on the glass (or stone) with thin oil paint or gouache, cover it with paper when it is not dry, and print it on the back of the paper with your palm. Only one sheet can be printed, so it is called single sheet printing.

Hole carving

Carve a number on paper or iron, press it on the surface of the container, and then color it on the back, and the number can be printed. This is an orifice plate. Now the general copy printing machine is also an orifice plate. The main orifice on the printing is screen printing. The screen printing material is mainly nylon gauze. It was originally made of silk, so it was called silk screen printing. There are three ways to do this:

(1) Cutting method: firstly, paper or plastic is used as the carrier, then shellac is coated on it, and 4-5 layers are coated repeatedly. After drying, cut the film hard according to the drawing. After completion, it is closely attached to the printed surface of the mesh, and the scratched surface of the mesh is ironed with an electric iron pad cloth to soften the film and attach it to the mesh. After uncovering the paper or plastic used as the carrier, leave a perforated plate on the net. Paper-cut can't be carved too finely, but it has the flavor of paper-cut and woodcut, and is often used by printmakers.

(2) Drawing method: Draw the surface to be scratched on the mesh with Arabic gum, dry it, coat it with shellac, and then wash the mesh with warm water. When gum Arabic melts, the grid there is transparent. You can also use lithograph ink stick instead of Arabic gum to paint, coat it with shellac, and then wash the gauze with gasoline.

(3) photosensitive method: apply photosensitive liquid to gauze, thoroughly dry it in a dark room, stick the painted picture under the gauze, and move it to an exposure table for exposure.

Then I washed it.

silk-screen printing

(Middle) Zhao Ruichun's Dressed Girl

The printing method of screen printing is to attach the screen printing surface of porous plate (i.e. screen facing down) to the paper, then pour the liquid pigment on its scraping surface (i.e. screen facing up), and then scrape the pigment with a scraper, so that the pigment can be printed on the underlying paper through holes to form a picture. The scraper is made of square flat rubber with wooden handle embedded. There are two kinds of pigments for screen printing: oily and water-based, depending on what substance is printed on. Screen technology is widely used in light industry. Many patterns on textiles, glassware, leather, ceramics and plastics are screen printed. For convenience, the pigment used for screen printing can be diluted with turpentine. Waterborne gouache pigments and propylene pigments can be used. Printed nylon mesh can be cleaned with caustic soda before use. The nylon mesh used by printmakers should be 29 meshes per square centimeter. Too thin, the mesh is easy to block; Too thick, the image is not exquisite enough. In order to explore various forms of expression, modern printmakers sometimes mix various types of printmaking methods in a print according to the needs of content, which is comprehensive printmaking. For example, the black master is printed with woodcut or copper plate, the color matching part is printed with color watermark, and the other part is printed with photographic screen. The forms of modern printmaking are rich and varied, and its development cannot be limited by the original classification.