Numbers (Robert Creeley) with Hand Drawing

About The Medium: Prints

Unlike paintings or drawings, prints generally exist in multiple examples. They are created by drawing a composition not directly on paper but on another surface, called a matrix, and then, by various techniques, printing that image on paper. Those techniques may involve the use of one or another kind of printing press and ink, or the image may be transferred by pressing the paper by hand onto the ink surface of the matrix and rubbing. Multiple impressions are made by printing new pieces of paper from the matrix in the same way. The total number of impressions an artist decides to make for any one image is called an edition. In modern times each impression in an edition is signed and numbered by the artist, but this is a relatively recent practice becoming more common practice in the 1960s.