Techniques and TechnologyErika Louise Tolputt

Hand EtchingWhat is hand etching and how is it used?

What is Hand Etching?

Hand Etching is where an image or picture is carved out of any form of colour or polishes stone, glass and ceramic tile. People usually use hand etching to

enhance family memorials, creating wildfire art, portraits, emblems, logos and much more as these are only a few examples of what you can do with

hand etching. This is a creative form of print based media.

Harley Davidson

Harley Davidson is a clear example of hand etching as the business has had their logo carved into polished stone to represent their business

and the aims and objectives of their business. The reasons for Harley Davidson promoting their business through hand etching is most

probably because its a creative and imaginative form of print based media and therefore have a more unique outlook on their business just

through doing this.

Advantages

1. An advantage of hand etching is that when you have mastered the skill of hand etching which is a difficult skill to master you would be earning vast amounts of money for being able to hand etch.

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.

Disadvantages

1. A disadvantage of hand etching is that the cost of hand etching is expensive depending on the materials that are to be used from the customer and also the equipment and training to hand etch also adds up to a substantial sum.

2. Another disadvantage of hand etching is that the money and time that it would take which is also crucial time and money 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.

IntaglioWhat 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 sections of the market so its open to a wide audience without a specific target market so therefore there are markets such as printmaking, jewellery, sculpture, burial mounds etc.

2. Another advantage of intaglio is that it can be used for almost anything that the customer particularly has an interest in. It can be used for various businesses as well as for personal use.

1. A disadvantage of intaglio is that it can be a slow and long process which therefore means that there would be lack in time efficiency which means a lot of important time would be lost.

2. Another disadvantage is that the material costs a substantial amount of money therefore this create cost efficiency as the materials are so expensive and the time to create the intaglio means that the cost will be high in comparison to the production time.

Linocut

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.

What is linocut and how is it used?

Advantages Disadvantages

1. An advantage of linocut is that its used for educational purposes which will help children prosper in school and in further education. This is also useful because it shows that in a business that creates linocuts can prosper from the idea that children use it in their education in their art subjects.

1. The disadvantages of this particular process is that it is time consuming and the materials cost a substantial amount of money this means that the production is slow and that it even costs a lot of budget to produce the products.

Screen Print

• 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.

What is screen printing?

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.

What is woodcut?

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.

What is lithography?

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.

What is letterpress?

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.

What is Gravure?

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.

What is Photocopying?

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.

What is Laser Printing?

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.

What is Inkjet?

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.

What is DTP?

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.

What is Screen Process?