
Overview - photopolymer film printmaking
Pause Fast Forward and Play - Essay by Alan Singer
Non-Etch Intaglio Type Printmaking - FK
CMYK separations from RGB color files were produced in Adobe Photoshop, and then individual yellow, blue, red, and black plates were made and printed (registered upside down) in sequence using the newly developed Akua Intaglio colors. These soft inks are particularly suitable for the requirements of the Intaglio Type medium of printmaking invented by Keith Howard. Digital-Halftone Intaglio-Type
Remarkably, the Intaglio Type medium is a new form of printing invented by an artist, for artists, rather than a commercial or industrial printing method adapted for artist's use, as is the case with virtually all other printmaking media.
As shown in the examples, the method offers extraordinary creative possibilities that expand and go beyond what was possible in etching/intaglio methodology, previously, and the full potential of this invention within reproductive contemporary art practice is as yet untapped.
Keith Howard's new full color photopolymer process involves the use of digital halftones made on an inkjet printer, thin transparent PETG plates that serve as the matrix for ImagOn film, and crucially, a new method of registering plates through the inverse placement of the plate on the press bed. The fact that the plates are transparent allows for the perfect sequential alignment that is required by a multi-plate project in full color. The result is a stunning new intaglio aesthetic.
Keith Howard, Munch's Scream Missing, 2006
4 Colour Intaglio Type 32 x 48 inch (hand printed with 8 plates)
Karrie Swanson and a team of RIT grad students collaboratively printing sets of full color intaglio type prints (plate inversion method)
RIT grad students registering an ImagOn plate
NEW METHOD
Keith Howard's new "upside-down" method of printing transparent plates using waterbased ink, allows for perfectly registered full color intaglio prints (also see PERFECT REGISTRATION for pin registration)
Keith Howard developed and perfected a new,
revolutionary approach to full color intaglio
printing in 2006. This page shows a documentation
of this research at RIT, NY, with Keith Howard
and a team of grad students using
dry-photopolymer films mounted on
clear plastic as the
printing substrate.
The new method can be used both
for photographic color images,
as well as for painterly and line-based approaches,
or other forms of direct mark-making,
using hand made color separations
on drafting mylar or clear film.