Printmaking techniques: relief printing (lino and block), monoprinting, and intaglio (drypoint), how each transfers an image, and the qualities and editioning each offers.

What this dot point is asking

Printmaking is a major family of processes for transferring an image, and each technique gives a different look and a different number of copies. This dot point is about how the main techniques work: relief printing (lino), monoprinting, and intaglio (drypoint), how each transfers the image, and the qualities and repeatability each offers. Choosing and refining a print process is the AO2 craft side of the course.

Relief printing

Relief printing prints from the raised surface of a block. In lino (or woodblock), you cut away the areas you want to stay white, so the uncut, raised areas hold the ink and print. The crucial idea is that you carve the negative: the parts you remove will not print. Relief gives a bold, graphic, high-contrast image with strong flat shapes and a characteristic cut mark, and fine detail is difficult, so it suits strong, simplified designs. Once cut, a block can be re-inked and printed many times, producing an edition of near-identical prints, and you can print in more than one colour with multiple blocks or a reduction method.

Monoprinting

Monoprinting is the most immediate print process and produces a one-off image. You paint or roll ink onto a smooth, non-absorbent plate (glass, acetate, gelatin) and either draw into it or lay paper on top and draw on the back, then transfer the image to paper in a single press. Because the ink image exists only on the plate for that one transfer, each print is unique and cannot be exactly repeated, which is what "mono" (one) means. Monoprinting gives painterly, spontaneous, often textural results, and it bridges drawing and printmaking, so it suits experimental, gestural work.

Intaglio: drypoint

Intaglio is the opposite of relief: it prints from lines cut below the surface. The accessible school method is drypoint, where you scratch lines into a plate (acetate, perspex or metal) with a sharp point. Ink is then pushed into the scratched lines and wiped off the smooth surface, so only the incised lines hold ink and print. The scratch throws up a tiny ridge of material (the burr) alongside it, which holds extra ink and gives drypoint its characteristic rich, slightly furry line. Drypoint suits expressive, linear images and gives a quality of line quite unlike relief's flat shapes.

Choosing and refining a print process

As with all media, the AO2 mark is for choosing an appropriate process and refining it. The processes differ in two ways that should drive your choice: their visual quality (relief's bold flat shapes, monoprint's painterly texture, drypoint's furry line) and their repeatability (relief and drypoint edition; monoprint is unique). Match these to your idea: a repeated motif might suit relief, a one-off atmospheric image a monoprint. Then refine the printing through trials, improving the inking, pressure and registration, because a controlled print communicates while a patchy one distracts. Document the trials so the refinement is visible.

Try this

Q1. State how relief printing transfers an image and one quality it gives. [Knowledge recall]

• Cue. In relief printing you cut away the areas that will stay white, so ink sits on the raised, uncut surface and prints; it gives bold, graphic, high-contrast images with strong flat shapes and a repeatable edition.

Q2. Explain why a monoprint is unique but a lino print is repeatable. [Short explanation]

• Cue. A monoprint's image exists only as wet ink on a smooth plate for a single transfer, so each print is one-off and cannot be exactly repeated; a lino block is permanently carved, so it can be re-inked and printed many times, producing an edition of near-identical prints.