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Process and Product: Printmaking

Explore activities, ideas, and artworks to learn more about printmaking techniques- and get inspired to create! This unit features a video with a contemporary working artist who makes prints, image galleries of prints from the National Gallery's collection, an explainer that dives into the basics of printmaking, and a lesson for beginner experimentation with various printmaking techniques. This resource is intended for grades 6-12.

Hear From An Artist About His Work

In this video, artist MasPaz discusses his approach to art and making prints for his community. 

After you watch the video, discuss these questions.

  • What is the source of the artist’s inspiration? 
  • What does MasPaz mean when he says he views his work as an “exercise”?
  • What choices did he make as he planned his prints?
  • What interests you about printmaking? 

Access Spanish-captioned video

Prints From the National Gallery of Art

Artists use different methods of making prints to depict a variety of subjects. As you look at each group of prints, consider these questions.

  • How does each artist use scale, color, line, and shape? 
  • Which printmaking methods do you see? 
  • What preparation steps did do you think the artist took to make the print?
  • Where does the artist repeat a design or pattern?
  • What feeling or story does each print communicate? Why do you think that?
  • What about these prints surprises or inspires you?

Clare Romano, Calcio (Soccer), 1958, woodcut, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.4135

Clare Romano, Summer Garden, 1958, color collagraph on red laid paper, Gift of Bob Stana and Tom Judy, 2016.148.43

Clare Romano, Grand Canyon, 1977, color collagraph on wove paper, Gift of Bob Stana and Tom Judy, 2016.148.44

Clare Romano, Bridge in the City, 1955, woodcut, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.4134

Clare Romano (1922–2017) was a lifelong printmaker who pioneered collagraphy, a kind of printmaking. Devoted to the practice of printmaking, Romano spent her professional career teaching generations of students to be printmakers.

Romare Bearden, Iliad, c. 1970, color monoprint collagraph on Arches paper, Gift of the Collectors Committee, 2001.36.1

Pink lines cut horizontally across six musicians against a pink background in this stylized, horizontal screenprint. Three of the musicians have black-colored skin, two have brown skin, and one has skin shaded with muted yellow and gray. The largest musician is in the left third of the picture. He has a black-colored face with a brown triangular nose, and streaks of pale yellow suggest light or a sheen across his forehead, one cheek, and chin. He looks out at us and smiles as he clamps a cigarette between his teeth. He wears a periwinkle-blue suit jacket and rests his oversized, brown-colored hands on a piano keyboard. The two brown-skinned musicians play the saxophone and perhaps a clarinet to the right. One wears a parchment-white suit jacket and the other charcoal gray. The yellow and gray-shaded face floats between the keyboardist and the pair to the right. He may hold up an old-fashioned camera with a flash bulb. A man with dark gray and black skin sits at a drum set along the left edge of the sheet, and the sixth, whose face, hand, and trumpet are blocked in with areas of white and black, is near a red circle in the top left corner of the composition. The body parts, features, instruments, and clothing are fragmented and stylized, as if collaged. The pink streaks against the pink background suggest that the scene was created in strips and then laid down onto the background. Writing in graphite under the printed image reads “7/12 A/P” to the left and “Romare Bearden” to the right.

Romare Bearden, Untitled (Jazz II), 1980, screenprint on wove paper, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Florian Carr Fund and Gift of the Print Research Foundation, 2008.115.11

Romare Bearden, Untitled from The Caribbean Poetry of Derek Walcott and the Art of Romare Bearden, 1983, color lithograph on Rives paper, Gift of Jane and Raphael Bernstein, 2002.115.1.2

Romare Bearden, Prelude to Troy (No. 2), 1974, collagraph in blue on wove Arches paper, Gift of Yvonne and Richard McCracken and Mary and Jerald Melberg, 2000.58.1

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) experimented with different kinds of art, including printmaking. His love for music, literature, and history is evident in his art, and his prints featured repeated themes, like musical instruments.

Lou Stovall, Sea to Shining Sea, 2008, color screenprint on wove paper, Gift of Lou and Di Stovall, 2009.8.1

Lou Stovall, Breathing Hope, 1996, color screenprint on wove paper, Gift of Lou, Di Bagley and Will Stovall, 2007.54.1

Lou Stovall, I Love You, 1970, color screenprint on wove paper, Corcoran Collection (Stovall Graphics), 2015.19.2514

Lou Stovall, Spirit, 1971, color screenprint on wove paper, Corcoran Collection (Stovall Graphics), 2015.19.2515

Lou Stovall (b. 1937) founded the printmaking studio Workshop, Inc., in 1968 in Washington, DC. There he produced his own prints and works by other artists for more than fifty years. His screenprints offer a range of subjects—some abstract, some drawn from nature..