M. C. Escher Techniques

M. C. Escher wrote “I am a printmaker, heart and soul.’ His unique visions were not expressed in paintings or drawings – these were only rough sketches to develop ideas which he would then realize using the traditional printmaking techniques of woodcut, mezzotint, and lithography.

Escher Woodcuts

To create a woodblock print, Escher carved a block of wood with chisels or engraving tools with infinite patience and skills honed over a lifetime of printmaking. Once the block was carved, it could then be carefully inked and pressed against special paper, printing it similarly to the way that a child might print with a rubberstamp. To get the ink rich and even is an art in itself: too little ink and you will get unevenly printed areas, too much ink will fill in fine lines. Each example of every print required separate careful inking, printing, and drying. Escher would hand-print a small number of prints from his blocks and keep them in his studio for collectors and exhibitions. If an edition sold out (and if he felt so inclined) he might then print a few more examples of this woodcut. Escher continued to print some of his woodblocks until 1968 when his health deteriorated. This explains why woodcuts were not numbered editions, since Escher could not predict how many examples he would create in the future. Early prints that were very popular such as ‘Day and Night’ and ‘Sky and Water I’ would therefore have larger editions than a later more esoteric woodcut such as ‘Circle Limit II’

Escher Lithography

Lithography is a more mysterious technique, but there are similarities to woodblock printing. Escher drew his designs onto specially prepared blocks of German limestone using artist’s lithographic pencils which are somewhat waxy. Printing these blocks required the assistance of a master lithographer who worked with Escher to first wet the stone evenly, then apply ink, and finally print it slowly under tremendous pressure of a large roller press. The finished lithographs were inspected by Escher, who destroyed any print not meeting his standards. Escher would decide on the number of prints to create with his lithographer, and it is my belief that since some defective prints were destroyed the editions are often odd numbers (for instance an edition of 47 instead of fifty examples). All except ten of his lithographic stones were destroyed following printing, most of them resurfaced and ‘erased’ in order to create new prints in the lithographer’s workshop. If a print was in great demand and the stone had not been destroyed, Escher would sometimes print additional small editions differentiated by a roman numeral following the edition number.

Escher Mezzotints

Escher also created exactly eight mezzotints, and this complex technique requires its own lengthy explanation. Suffice to say that Escher laboriously crafted a copper plate incised with his image and then inked this plate and printed it in his studio on a small roller press. The technique to create and print the plate was extraordinarily demanding and frequently tedious, and very few prints could be created before the copper plate degraded and could no longer be printed.