My wife suggested it might be helpful for my readers to have a short explanation of what the different kinds of prints are. There are 4 basic modes of making prints: relief, intaglio, planographic, and screen printing. What’s the difference? For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume you’re printing with black ink on white paper.
Relief printing (aka letterpress) means you remove the surface of your plate wherever you don’t want ink (or do want white space). This is typically a block of wood, or linoleum attached to a wood block. The ink is applied to those raised surfaces which will make the black lines of the picture with a roller. Think of a rubber stamp and you’ll be in the right ballpark.
Intaglio means you remove the surface of your plate where you DO want ink. Typically, a metal plate is used, and lines are incised into the plate where ink is desired, either with a sharp tool (engraving) or with acid (etching–in this case the plate is first evenly coated with wax, and then the picture is “drawn” with a sharp object removing the wax, and the plate is soaked in acid. The wax protects the rest of the plate so only the “drawn” areas are etched by the acid. The acid is washed off and the wax is then removed.) Ink is applied with a roller, and then ink on the smooth surface of the plate is removed by wiping the plate gently, leaving ink ONLY in the indentations where lines were created. (Intaglio is Italian for incised.)
Planographic printing, aka lithography, involves “drawing” a picture on the flat plate (typically a block of limestone that has been made very smooth) with a wax crayon that attracts ink. The surface is then flooded with ink, and ink is wiped away leaving ink retained on top of the crayoned pattern. (Litho=greek root for stone.)
In each of these three methods, paper is then applied to the plate and pressed hard against to create the image.
Screen printing involves use of a stencil (screen) with the picture drawn into it as a pattern blocking ink from passing through in the desired white spaces directly onto the paper.
I hope this is helpful–feel free to post questions!