That said, I now continue with printmaking. Prints are not always multiples of the same image, as we went into last article. A monotype is a one-time, totally unique and non-repeatable image. It is just as singular as any drawing or painting. With the pervasiveness of commercial offset lithography, however, the general public thinks that a "print" is a picture run off on a commercial press somewhere, a copy of some original art. Actually, those are reproductions, as you now know, and there are often several thousands of them run off at a time.
I am a printmaker. I do not print reproductions of anything! I might make a multiple image, however, if I have a metal plate so I can run several etchings, for example. Or if I have done a woodcut, I might print a few of those. These edition numbers are taken into consideration before one begins to make the woodcut, or etching plate. The sizes of areas, the sizes of lines, the depth of the incising - all play a part in the run.
With these two examples, I see that I have brought up two diverse types of printmaking, i.e. intaglio and relief. An intaglio is a print made by running an incised plate through a press, under pressure, so that the ink down in the tiny incised lines gets squished out (and I think maybe that some molecules of the paper are squished in), so that an image is produced. These are etchings, for example, and engravings. They can be printed in editions, that is, in multiples.
Relief printing is the kind that is made by printing from a woodcut. The parts that are not going to be printed will be cut down into the wood, and the parts that remain on the surface of the woodblock will be covered by the ink or paint, and then printed. The part cut away is in "relief", although it is shallow ("bas") relief. A press can be used, or one can print by manual pressure. Rubber stamps and cut away erasers are also examples of relief printing. A rubbing that you made of a penny or a street sewer cover is not technically a print, since it is not a transfer from the plate to the paper; but this kind of imagemaking is usually tossed in with printmaking for lack of its own category.
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