Printmaking

Printmaking is a media that is truly close to Jettychan’s heart. She studied print making both in the US and in Tokyo, Japan. She finds inspiration in traditional Japanese wood block prints as well as detailed intaglio stylings. Prints can be made in monotype or in small sized limited editions. A press will be purchased in the future making intaglio and larger print quantities available. Currently, wood block, and rubber plate prints as well as monotype printing are all that are available.

Printmaking for Jettychan consists of 4 different types of prints: intaglio, monotype, lithography, wood block and rubber plate prints.

In laymen’s terms, Intaglio is a printmaking that is done by etching an image into the surface of a plate, then applying a ground to areas you do not want to be removed and soaking the metal plate in acid for different amounts of time depending on the desired depth of the lines. After, ink is rolled onto the surface and the excess is whipped off leaving ink in the lines. Paper is rolled with it through a press. When the paper is pulled off the resulting image from the lines will remain on the paper.

Lithography is a much harder printmaking style for Jettychan as it must be done on a thick stone. The image is drawn on the stone using a waxy or grease pen method and then a gum Arabic solution (acid) is applied to the stone. Then the excess grease material is removed and it is ready for ink. Then the ink is rolled on the top and run through a press. In order to make a lithography image on the stone one must spin scrap off the layer of stone; also the stone must be kept wet while printing so vats of water must be around. It is very hard and the studio has no plans to start a Lithography division due to the complexity of the process.

Woodblock and rubber plates are probably the easiest to understand as they are prints that are carved into the surface and then covered in ink and run through a press (or done by hand in the case of rubber plates.

Monotypes are painted on the surface of a piece of plastic and then each color is run through the press separately and in the final piece will have all the colors together. However as the name suggests a monotype is only one print while other print methods can have hundreds of prints and editions.