Lamar Reed - Art Blog: Printmaking

Printmaking is the art of making pictures and printing them from prepared plates or blocks. There are many types of printmaking and most of them tends to differ a lot. Without printmaking, digital printing would not exist today. Printmaking also also makes it easier for the general public to access art since it is more inexpensive than other forms of art. It allows artist to be able to show their work on a much larger scale and even make copies.

Printmaking is revolutionary because not only did it inspire the thought digital printing, it also allowed artist to do more things. Instead of having to draw or carve the same thing over and over again, they could just make a copies so time can be saved. This also allows artist to become more creative with their work as new opportunities are opened.

An example of printmaking is the woodcut method. Woodcut is a relief printing technique that is done by carving out an image in a block of wood and then inking the negative space around the carved image. I find this type of printmaking interesting because I notice that it seems pretty easy to do compared to the other types of printmaking and the outcome of the image comes out very detailed and clean. I wonder how long it takes to do this type of printing and how easy it is to carve into the wood. What if you need a certain type of wood in order to do this type of print?