Printmaking in the sun An artist's guide to making professional-quality prints using the solarplate method

The first printmakers were cave people who painted their hands and slapped them against cave walls. Today, printmakers like Ayres still use methods nearly as simple. Others, like printmaker and painter Welden, have created completely new processes, like his solarplate method. Monotypes, the subject of Ayres's book, are created by applying oil- or water-based paint to a flat plate. By pressing a dampened sheet of paper to the plate, a single print is made. The earliest such prints go back to Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, around 1640. Later, Degas and Gauguin experimented with the method. Today, there is a virtual explosion of new ways to create monotypes. Ayres explores the work of a variety of such artists, who demonstrate imaging techniques, masks, stencils, collage, and mixed-media prints. The results vary from traditional images to eccentric, colorful fantasies. In 1972, Welden discovered that polymer printers' plates could be used in printmaking by exposing them to the sun. Draw on a transparency, place it over the plate, expose it to the sun, and the plate is, in effect, etched for printing. The method is now widely used, and Welden and Muir have produced the first book on this extremely versatile art. Both books are highly recommended. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.