The Zea Mays Printmaking Online School is home for all of our video tutorials and research projects. Our video courses are professionally made in our studio in Florence, Massachusetts.
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- Lots of extra materials – slideshows, assignments, downloadable pdfs
- Free stuff! – Our research projects with downloadable “how-to” pdfs
Tutorials available now:
In this course you will learn the basics of carving and printing woodcuts at home without a press. You will learn about different woods, tools and approaches to imagery. Demonstrations include how to prepare a block, tool use and maintenance, carving, ink handling and printing by hand.
This course is designed for beginners or those who want a refresher course in the use of Akua Intaglio inks, monotype techniques and the elements of art. After taking this course, you’ll have the skills to make gorgeous painterly prints on your own.
Understanding and practicing color mixing is a powerful tool in your art making. This course is organized around exercises that will help you master intentional color mixing and how to use color in your art.
Collage is a wonderful way to learn and try out what you know about color, composition, shape, texture, and the space created by those elements. This course is designed for all levels, those new to monotype and collage, or seasoned printmakers who want some fresh ideas for working with all those unfinished prints!
Learn a variety of monotype printing techniques that you can do on your kitchen table at home. Joyce Silverstone shares her unique approach to this user-friendly printmaking technique through thoughtful demonstrations and a discussion of prints as they evolve.
Moku hanga, the traditional Japanese method of woodblock printing, is an elegant, green, and low-tech process that works easily in a home studio and combines well with other printmaking methods. Annie Bissett is an accomplished Moku hanga artist and shares a history of the medium as you follow her through all the steps in the creation of a multi-color, moku hanga woodblock print.
This tutorial is an introduction to Photopolymer Intaglio, a beautiful marriage of photography and printmaking. Participants will learn how to turn their digital photographs into intaglio printing plates and how to hand print them on an etching press.
The ultimate in upcycling and reuse of common household materials for printmaking! Learn how you can turn the packaging for beverages and snacks into versatile printing plates.
Lithographs made on polyester plates are a direct drawing method using sharpie markers, pens, and brushes to create fluid lines. This tutorial focuses on drawing and chance variations that will bring these repeatable plates into the world of the monoprint.
In this tutorial you will learn how to carve and print a color reduction block, in which progressive layers of carving and color printing yield rich, vibrant prints. The process of bringing an image to life through carving is both soothing and meditative.
This tutorial is like a yoga class for mark making. Play and improvise in a variety of monotype techniques with the addition of repeatable images on incised PETG drypoint plates
Get inspired and acquire the skills you need to enrich your screen printing practice! This tutorial is rich with tips on ergonomic printing set ups, ink selection and color mixing, multiple layer printing and easy clean up.
This tutorial will take you through the entire process of creating and printing drypoints from both copper and plastic plates. You’ll learn how to prepare the plates, use and care for your tools, ink and print both on and off of an etching press.
Empower yourself to take care of your etching equipment and tools! Zea Mays Printmaking founding Director Liz Chalfin takes you through the basics for caring for your press, blankets, tools and mordants.
Make your own Inks! Start by foraging for berries, grasses, flowers and more and then learn how to turn these organic materials into beautiful colorful dyes that you can use to make monotype prints.
Do you often find yourself wondering how to make your artwork better? Do you look at others’ work and are at a loss of how to talk about it? This course will provide you with the tools needed to look critically at artwork, to discover what makes an image “work” or not, and to utilize these strategies in your own art making practice.
In this video tutorial, Joyce Silverstone teaches you how to make a collagraph by adhering carborundum grit to Petg plastic plates with rolled or painted acrylic mediums. Using a variety of acrylic mediums with or without carborundum, these plates can hold a wide range of values; from gritty deep dark spaces to washes of light tone.
Printmaking involves chemicals and machinery often found in STEM fields, but artists rarely receive the same education on their potential hazards, disposal considerations, or safe handling requirements. This tutorial will cover the hazards of common art making and consumer materials, how to choose safer chemicals, which personal protective equipment is right for you, and how to detect health hazards and the symptoms from exposure to them. This is an information-packed webinar that will provide you everything you need to understand chemical properties and how to incorporate them into your studio in a safe and healthy way!
Demonstrations From Around the World:
These demos were originally recorded over Zoom as part of the 2021 Virtual World Tour. To read more about the project and access the full recordings that include studio tours and Q&A’s, visit the Zea Mays Printmaking Online School. All videos linked below contain the full demonstrations of the techniques described.
Andrew Baldwin is probably most well known as the inventor of BIG (Baldwin’s Intaglio Ground) – the extremely versatile etching ground now used all over the world. He demonstrates the many innovative and exciting ways that BIG etching ground can be used to create non-toxic etchings. Discover how you can replace the traditional sugar lift using instant coffee and create beautiful mezzotints using emery paper.
Nico Ras, a graduate student at University of Johannesburg and frequent guest teacher at Artist Proof Studios (Johannesburg, South Africa), demonstrates a technique that uses charcoal dust and an exposed silkscreen to create delicate, ethereal monotypes.
Collagraph is a very enjoyable printmaking technique, allowing diverse means of artistic expression. Using simple materials such as cardboard, paper, tapes, textures, and carborundum grit to create plates that can be inked and printed in a myriad of ways. Alessia De Bortoli of Scuola Internazionale di Grafica (Venice, Italy) shows us how to create a collagraph plate and the procedure for printing it both as an intaglio and a relief print, using an etching press.
Marnix teaches Printmaking at the Academy for Visual Arts (Ghent, Belgium) and travels the world conducting workshops on sustainable printmaking. During this demonstration he shows us how to prepare a do-it-yourself soft ground for etching based upon two simple ingredients that are available everywhere, how to apply the ground, etch and print. Includes clean-up and how to use as little water as possible for the job.
As a studio educator in Printmaking at the University of South Australia (Adelaide), Hanah Williams teaches Eco-Aware Etching and Relief printmaking processes. In this demonstration, she presents etching resist techniques on aluminum in a copper sulfate mordant. Using different materials as resists gives artists the opportunity to experiment with mark making, texture and shape.
Join Liz Chalfin, founder of Zea Mays Printmaking, as she demonstrates an easy, non-darkroom method of photo etching on metal plates. Beginning with a photocopy, she shows us how to transfer the image to a metal plate, etch and print. This process removes the need for a darkroom and gives you an etched image that can be reworked with all of the etching methods we know and love.
Kate Baillies of Alberta Printmakers (Calgary, Alberta, Canada) is a dedicated researcher and digs in deep when she wants to understand a process or develop a new technique. This demonstration takes a walk on the spontaneous side as she guides us through the process of how to create painterly, richly textured images directly on a photopolymer plate.