A brief note about serigraph

Prints are made by a great variety of processes, the 4 main categories are:

a) Relief Methods: woodcut, wood-engraving and linocut.
b) Intaglio Methods: line engraving, drypoint, etching, soft-ground etching and aquatint.
c) Surface or Planographic Methods: lithography and it's variants.
d)Stencil Methods: serigraph (silk-screen print).

Click here to see Yolene's serigraphs.

Serigraph is a modern development of stencil printing. The process was developed in the 1930's as an artist medium for making prints in broad masses of brilliant and opaque colors. It is an expensive and labor intensive process of layering colors to accurately reproduce an original artwork. A cut stencil is attached to a silk screen of fine mesh which has been streched on a wooden frame, and the color is forced trough the unmasked area of the screen on to the paper beneath by means of a squeegee.

Since the mid 19th century it has become the custom for most artists to issue their prints, whether etchings, woodcuts, lithographs or serigraphs, in restricted editions, with each copy signed and numbered; the number is written like a fraction, e.g. '8/300' indicating the eighth print of an edition of 300 copies (not necessarily in the order they are made). The plate is destroyed after the edition has been printed in order to reinforce the rarity value and to prevent unauthorized prints of inferior quality being taken subsequently.

A proof is an impression taken by an engraver from his plate or block in order to see how his work is proceeding and decide what corrections or additions to make. The term "artist's proof" (or "AP"), often written in pencil alongside the artist's signature on the printed sheet, should mean a proof taken by the artist, outside the numbered edition referred to above and reserved for his/her own reference. It amounts usually to about 10% of the edition.
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