What is an Original Print?

• The artist alone must create the master image on stone, or  whatever material is used to make the print.

• The print — if not printed by the artist — should be hand printed by someone under the artist's direct supervision.

• Each impression should be approved and signed by the artist and the medium/matrix destroyed or cancelled. 

• The original print is not a copy of anything else, not a copy of a painting or another print. 

• If an artist chooses to copy his or her own work, originally done in another medium, it would be a print done after an oil (or other medium). ie.Giclée Prints - newly coined term ithat describes fine art digital prints made on inkjet printers. The name originally applied to fine art prints created on IRIS printers in a process invented in the late 1980s but has since come to mean any inkjet print. It is often used by artists, galleries, and print shops to denote high quality printing but since it is an unregulated word it has no associated warranty of quality. 
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gicl%C3%A9e

• An original print is a creative endeavour by the artist and, therefore, is as valid an expression as is any other form of visual art — whether it be a painting or a sculpture. The original print is a work of art in its own right.

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A print is an artwork made by transferring ink from one surface onto another- usually onto paper. The artist creates an image on the surface and transfers the image in ink by placing paper onto this surface and putting it through a printing press. The print process is capable of producing multiples of the same image. Each print that is pulled from the press in this way is called an 'impression'. The artist decides how many impressions they would like from one image and the total amount of these makes the 'edition'. The artist then signs and numbers each impression.


An Original Print is not a reproduction of another work, painting, print or anything else. It is a work of art in its own right. Although there are many of the same image in an edition, each print is an individual part of the whole, the whole being the edition. An original print is actually one piece of a multiple original work of art.

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A graphic or original print is the printed impression produced from a block, plate, stone or screen on which the artist who conceived the idea has worked.
Because the artist has chosen to render the idea in 'print', it is possible to produce a number of identical images, each one an original work by the artist. After the total number of prints in the edition has been 'pulled', the blocks, plates, stones or screens are defaced or recycled so that no further impressions may be taken.
In the past when great artists such as Durer and Rembrandt were working, the prints were unnumbered. In fact, it is only a modern convention to limit the edition, thus creating an increasing demand for the limited number and making them more desirable as an investment. There are many methods of making an original print, a few of which are explained in the next section - techniques.