Orange Education & Art Terms.

ARTIST PROOF: Common practice is that 10 to 15 percent of an edition is reserved for the artist. These proofs are identical to impressions in the edition in most instances.

ACID FREE: Certifies that the print contains no harmful acid or alkaline that my affect the life of the paper or quality of the imaged printed.

CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY: A document issued with limited edition prints, with the print published date, the image, original art media, number of the prints in the edition, a statement about the work from the artist.

ESTATE SIGNED: A piece produced with the approval of the estate of a deceased artist and with a facsimile of the artist's signature.

ETCHING: An image created by the artist on a metal plate by means of engraving tool acid. This produces the sunken line which will receive the ink.

DIGITAL PRINT OR GICLEE:  A fine art print that has become more precise with the advent of the revolutionary printing process. Giclee is a French term meaning "spray of ink." In the giclee process, a fine stream of ink (more than four millions droplets per second) is sprayed onto archival art paper or canvas. Since no screens are used in printing, the prints have a higher resolution than lithographs and the dynamic range is greater than serigraphs.

LIMITED EDITION: A fixed number of identical prints of an image, signed by the artist, sequence numbered and showing both the print's number and the total edition size print is referred to as a limited edition print.

LITHOGRAPH: A print produced by a printing process in which the image to be printed is placed on a flat sheet or metal plate or stone, and treated so retain ink while the image areas are treated to repel ink.

MEDIUM: Medium is the material or technical means of artistic expression. Examples include: oils, watercolors, acrylics, ink, pencil, and charcoal. Technical examples are lithography, serigraphy, and giclee. Mixed media is the use of two or more materials and/or technical means.

OPEN EDITION: The quantity of prints reproduced is not limited. As long as the image is in demand it will be reprinted.

ORIGINAL: The first of a work, typically the painting from which prints are made.

PRINTER'S PROOF: Common practice by many printers is that a small number of impressions are for their review. These proofs are marketed and are identical impressions edition in most instances.

RAG PAPER: One hundred percent rag paper are constructed of cotton fibers. It is traditionally considered museum quality. Watercolor paper and most printmaking paper are examples of archival rag paper.

REMARQUE: A current practice by some artist is the addition of a small personalized denote near his penciled signature in the margin of the graphic.

SERIGRAPH: A print made by the silk-screen process involving the use of stencils. Serigraphy is a fine art, color stencil printmaking process in which special paint is forced through a fine screen onto the paper beneath. Paint is applied to a fabric screen, and penetrating areas are not blocked by a stencil. Areas which do not print are blocked in each of the stencil screens. A sheet of high quality, archival paper is first inserted under the screen and special paint poured along the edge of the frame. A squeegee is then pulled from back to front, producing a direct transfer of the image from screen to paper. A separate stencil is required for each color in each serigraph. Screen stencils are used to produce a multicolored print.  

The screen materials most commonly used in the process are fine silk bolting cloth, nylon or polyester stretched over a wooden frame. In the studio, the frame that holds each screen is hinged to a flat bed or table on which the paper is placed. A simple prop bar, called a butterfly, keeps the screen raised above the bed while the printed artwork is removed and fresh paper is inserted. The prop bar drops by its own weight when the screen is lifted and is moved aside when the serigrapher is ready to pull another piece in the edition.

The use of silkscreen as a modern artist medium began in 1938 when a group of New York artists, under the auspices of the Federal Art Project, experimented with silkscreening...fully developing its potential. This group coined the term "serigraphy" and later formed the nucleus of the National Serigraph Society, which actively promoted the graphic form for twenty years. Among those active in the development of serigraphy were Anthony Velonis, who inspired the original project, and Carl Zigrossa, an art critic, who named the group.

In the 1960s, Pop Art took serigraphy to a new level of sophistication.  Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, Robert Raushenburg, and others, began experimenting in color and textures unavailable in other mediums.  As a commercial medium screen printing has been used by such modern artists as William Tolliver.

SIGNED AND NUMBERED: Prints that are authenticated with the artist's signature, the total number impressions in the edition, and the order in which impression is signed.

WOODCUT: A relief technique in which a design is cut with knives, gouges or chiseled planks of wood parallel to the wood grain. Wood engraving is a relief technique which a design is cut with burins, gouges or chisels into the end grain of wood block.