La fleur de magnolia grandflora   Mezzotint 4 x 6"

A young woman smiles
Whiteline woodblock 5 x 7"

Printmaking

The fine art print is very different from a reproduction print. Reproduction prints are mass produced machine prints from art images. Fine art prints are etchings, engravings, lithographs, mezzotints, woodcuts/linoleum cuts, silk-screens, monotypes, and collagraphs. They are images created by the artist, then inked and printed by hand. Most methods use a press like the one shown here. These prints are either monoprints (one of a kind) or limited edition prints signed by the artist.

I have recently returned to printmaking after a long absence. The two prints you see on this page were made this year. The magnolia is a mezzotint. A mezzotint is made by roughening the copper plate with a metal tool, a rocker. The small teeth of the rocker create tiny burrs that hold ink during the printing process. The rocked areas that are left alone will produce a rich black print, and areas that have been scraped and burnished (knocking the burrs down) will hold less ink, producing lighter values. The more an area is scraped and burnished, the lighter it will print. This process produces an image with a high level of quality and richness.

I made my first white-line woodblock print at a workshop this summer. The design is drawn on a wooden block of white pine. The drawn lines are then cut out from the block to a minimum depth of 1/16 of an inch using a sharp blade. The resulting incised lines serve as boundaries between areas of different color when the block is inked and, because they are below the surface of the block and receive no color, appear as ‘white lines’ in the completed print. Hence, the name of the medium. The printing process is begun by clamping a sheet of printmaking paper to the block, ensuring accurate registration. Each color is then applied to the block with a brush and printed separately by rubbing with a spoon. The process, though made somewhat simpler because of the use of a single block, is a slow one. Consequently, the number of individual prints in an edition is usually very small.

Both of these prints are for sale. Please e-mail me at mchristymullen@gmail.com if you are interested. I will eventually be showing more prints through a link on this page, so please return soon.