A Printmaker's Guide to Printmaking and Prints

A MONOTYPE is one image, and the ONLY one - thus mono. With the success of the marketing tool for editions, however, now people usually want to see a number over another number, thinking that it will be somehow more valuable. I am one of the printmakers who puts 1 over 1, to show that the image is the one and ONLY. There is no edition. It is unique. Other times, I put the word "monotype" on the face of the piece to indicate its uniqueness.

A MONOPRINT is different, however! A monoprint has a repeatable matrix, with changeable peripheral elements. No monoprint will be exactly the same as another, either, because the elements outside the core matrix do change. But the MONOTYPE is utterly unique.

I will continue next time with brief explanations of doing these different elements of printmaking. Since I have studied it so much, and also taught it, I often find it difficult not to explain it too much. And I will get into other types of printmaking also, such as silkscreen, woodcut, linocut, lithograph.

See some examples of printmaking here - Nice web page from U of Kansas: http://www.ukans.edu/~sma/prints.html These prints are not contemporary, but are good examples of many types of printmaking.

Here is another very important site to visit: http://www.art2u.com/art.html These prints are contemporary, and excellent. Also, there are examples of many different methods of printmaking.

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