Printmaking Vocabulary in English — 20 Essential Terms

Both etching and engraving are intaglio techniques that create incised lines in a metal plate, but they use different methods. In engraving, the printmaker uses a sharp tool called a burin to cut lines directly into the metal by hand, requiring great physical skill and producing clean, precise lines that vary in width according to the angle and pressure applied. In etching, the plate is first coated with a waxy, acid-resistant ground; the artist then draws through the ground with a needle (which requires much less force than cutting metal), and the plate is submerged in acid, which bites into the exposed metal to create the lines. Etching generally produces a freer, more spontaneous line quality, while engraving tends to be more controlled and precise.

An edition is the complete set of prints produced from a single matrix or set of plates. A limited edition fixes the total number in advance: for example, an edition of 75 means that exactly 75 impressions are printed before the plate is cancelled or destroyed. The number written as “12/75” on a print means it is the twelfth impression printed from an edition of seventy-five. Lower numbers do not necessarily mean better quality — in most modern printmaking, the quality is consistent throughout the edition. Outside the numbered edition, artist's proofs (marked AP or EA) are additional impressions kept by the artist, traditionally up to ten per cent of the edition size.

In relief printing (woodcut, linocut, wood engraving), the image-bearing areas stand raised above the surface of the matrix. Ink is applied to these raised areas and transferred to paper when the surface is pressed down. The cut-away areas remain white or unprinted. In intaglio printing (etching, engraving, drypoint, aquatint), the image-bearing lines or tones are incised below the surface of a metal plate. Ink is pressed into these recessed areas, the surface of the plate is wiped clean, and damp paper is forced into the incisions under great pressure from a printing press, drawing out the ink. The two methods produce visually very different results: relief prints have flat, solid marks; intaglio prints often have fine, detailed lines with embossed surfaces.

Aquatint is an intaglio technique used to create areas of tone, texture, and shading on a metal plate, as opposed to the pure linear marks produced by etching or engraving. Fine powdered resin is dusted onto the plate and melted so it adheres; when the plate is placed in acid, the acid bites around the tiny resin particles, creating a finely granular surface that holds ink and prints as an even tone. The longer the acid bites, the deeper the texture and the darker the tone. Artists can create a full range of tones from pale grey to deep black by stopping out (varnishing) lighter areas before re-biting the plate. Goya and Aquatint became inseparable — he used the technique to create the atmospheric shadows in his Los Caprichos series.

A proof is a trial impression pulled from the printing matrix during the making of a print to check its progress. Artists pull multiple proofs at different stages to assess tonal balance, line quality, and the effect of any changes made to the plate. A working proof or state proof shows the print at a particular stage of development and may look quite different from the final edition. An artist's proof (marked AP, A/P, or E.A. for épreuve d'artiste) is a finished impression, identical to the edition, retained by the artist outside the numbered run. The convention is that artist's proofs should not exceed ten per cent of the edition size, so an edition of 50 should have no more than 5 artist's proofs.

A screenprint (also called serigraphy or silk-screen printing) is a planographic technique in which ink is forced through a fine mesh screen onto the paper below. The non-printing areas are blocked by a stencil or photographic emulsion. Screenprinting is unique among traditional fine art printmaking techniques because it is well-suited to printing large, flat areas of bold, opaque colour. It can reproduce photographic images accurately. Andy Warhol exploited these qualities to create his iconic Pop Art prints, blurring the boundary between fine art and commercial printing. Unlike etching or woodcut, screenprinting does not require a press — a squeegee is used to push ink through the screen — which makes it more accessible to artists without specialised equipment.

Drypoint is an intaglio technique in which a sharp needle or tool is drawn directly across a metal plate without any acid, scratching into the surface and raising a fine ridge of displaced metal called the burr along each side of the scratched line. When the plate is inked and wiped, ink catches in both the scratched channel and the burr, printing as a characteristically soft, velvety, slightly smudged line very different from the clean precision of an engraved line. The burr is fragile: it wears down quickly during printing, so drypoint plates produce very small editions before the distinctive quality of the line disappears. Rembrandt was a master of drypoint, using it to create atmospheric passages of rich shadow in his prints.

A state is a distinct version of a print that results from deliberate changes made to the matrix between different groups of impressions. When a printmaker reworks or modifies a plate — adding new lines, burnishing out areas, deepening the biting, or adding tone — the resulting prints form a new state. A print catalogue will describe where in the sequence a particular impression falls: “first state of four” means it was printed before any of the three subsequent reworkings. Early states are sometimes more sought after by collectors because they may show a freshness or experimental quality before the image was refined, but later states may be technically richer. Rembrandt left some of the most extensively reworked plates in the history of printmaking, with some images existing in more than ten states.

The terms are sometimes confused. A monotype is made by painting or drawing on a smooth, non-absorbent surface (glass, metal, or acrylic) and pressing paper onto it while the ink or paint is still wet; the result is a unique print with no matrix, and subsequent printings produce only faint ghost images. A monoprint also produces unique impressions, but it uses an existing matrix — an etching plate, woodblock, or screenprint — that is altered, added to, or overworked between each printing. Because a fixed matrix is involved, monoprints retain some consistent elements from the underlying image while each impression has unique painted or drawn additions. Both techniques produce one-of-a-kind works that cannot be exactly reproduced.

The most effective approach is to look at real prints and read their descriptions carefully. Visit print room collections at major museums — the British Museum's Department of Prints and Drawings is one of the finest in the world — and read the detailed wall labels, which use the precise technical vocabulary of the field. Online databases such as the British Museum's online collection or the Metropolitan Museum's catalogue allow you to browse tens of thousands of prints with descriptions in English. Watching videos of printmakers at work and hearing them explain their process in English is also very effective. Then reinforce the 20 key words on this page with Flash Cards and Matching Pairs on LexFizz.