Chuck Close creating portrait using his FINGERPRINTS ONLY

Chuck Close -  more than just a painter, photographer and printmaker

For more than 30 years, Chuck Close - renowned as one of America's foremost artists in any media - has explored the art of printmaking in his continuing investigation into the principles of perception. This exhibition provides a comprehensive survey of the full extent of Close's long involvement with the varied forms and processes of printmaking, and the first such investigation in more than twelve years of what can only be termed a prodigious accomplishment in the field. Featuring images ranging from 1972 to the present, Chuck Close Prints shows the artist's range of invention in etching, aquatint, lithography, handmade paper, direct gravure, silkscreen, traditional Japanese woodcut and reduction linocut. 

An example when photography looks like its made in the etching technique

Etching

Etching is a method of making prints from a metal plate, usually copper or zinc, which has been bitten with acid. The plate is first coated with an acid-resistant substance (etching ground or varnish) through which the design is drawn with a sharp tool (burin or other). The acid eats the plate through the exposed lines; the more time the plate is left in the acid, the coarser the lines. When the plate is inked and its surface rubbed clean, and it is covered with paper and passed under a cylindrical press, the ink captured in the lines is transferred to the paper.

The first etching on record was that of the Swiss artist, Urs Graf, who printed from iron plates. Albrecht Dürer, though a consummate engraver, made only five etchings, and never really dominated the technique. That was left to later artists like the Italian Parmigianino and, of course, Rembrandt, perhaps the greatest etcher of all time... Later adepts of acid etching were Tiepolo and Canaletto in Italy and, of course, Francisco Goya in Spain. The 20th century saw important bodies of work by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall and Georges Rouault.