Printmaking is the process of making marks onto a piece of material called a plate, and using ink to print these marks. Many different materials can be used to make the plate, however usually metal or plastic is used because of its strength. Marks can be made on the plate in a variety of ways. They can be scratched, ground or sanded, or etched (using acid to bite into metal). Similarly materials such as sand, leaves, beads, string or any manner of material can be stuck onto the plate so that ink can be pushed into the pattern of the object.

After an image has been made the ink will be rolled and pushing into the image. A damp piece of weighted art paper is used for printing. It is dampened so that the paper is more flexible and will push into each little mark on the plate. A press is used to print – a large hard driven machine with a circular roller that is wound over the paper and plate.

After much making of marks and testing of ink the artist will roll a print, those which you see here or in many galleries and shops around the world. The artist will be looking at ink colour, if their image has been preserved, and whether the ink is clean around all edges. It will often take as many as 10 prints to get one which is perfect. 

The artist may label the print in a number of ways. A proof is taken periodically, during the development of the plate. A proof will be labelled AP (artist proof), and can be sold, but more commonly they are kept by the artist as a note of paper and ink used. A unique print is one-off print, unlike any other produced. It will be labelled as such, and will be unique in ink colour, paper type or in image. Most commonly a print is printed in an edition – a number of identical prints that are each labelled i.e.. 1/10 which means the first print in a series of 10 identical prints. An edition can be any size. These labels will be found under the bottom left corner of the print. A print will also have two other pieces of writing underneath the image. In the centre the artist will hand write the title of the image and in the right corner the artist will sign and sometimes date the image.