Printmaking: Unit 3

          When I originally heard of print making I did not have a good mental image of what it might be. I kept wondering “how are they able to make multiples of it.” The idea of inscribing the art and applying the ink made complete sense. Somehow the only printing I could think of when it was first mentioned to me was the kind printing through a polaroid picture or printing on a printer. It wasn’t until I saw the video on printmaking that I understood that a machine is used to press ink from the original surface onto the paper. It was also interesting to learn about the two different kinds of printings and how they work. Relief printing allows you to ink the protruding surface space. Meanwhile, Intaglio printmaking allows you to ink the dents within the surface space. Among these two kinds of printmaking there are different designs. These include woodcut, engraving, etching, mezzotint, aquatint, drypoint, and lithography. Among all of these I am intrigued by aquatint and mezzotint. Artists seem to like those 2 forms because it is much easier to create the art instead of styles, unlike drypoint which requires meticulous labor. Seeing as I have done neither, I am interested in those 2 designs because of the science involved. I would love to know exactly what kind of acid is used during those styles and see a demonstration of how the acid reacts to the material in nanoseconds.