What is an original print?

An original print is a piece of art that is created on a substrate of some kind and then transfered to a final carrier like paper or cloth. The transfer process may be done in a number of ways but all require the artists hand to complete. While a press may be used to create a print, it is not a commercial offset process.

To create each print, the substrate, in my case the plate which is either a small sheet of copper, zinc or plexiglass first must have an image either scratched, etched or applied in some fashion to it. Once the image is created, the plate must then be inked or painted so that the plate image can be transferred to a piece of paper. The transfer is usually done under pressure by running the plate and the paper through a press.

In using this process, there is a limited edition of prints that are "pulled". The process of preparing the plate for each print is usually time consuming. Depending on the type of plate and the type of technique used, a plate can only take so many passes through the press before the image or the plate starts to deteriorate and the image quality starts to decrease. Thus the term "limited edition" means just that and so, each print is numbered.

Original Prints