picture reproduction

[lizw]

When you buy a print of the Mona Lisa or any other famous work of art - how does the print actually get created? If it's a kind of photograph of the original how did they reproduce paintings before cameras? Did somebody actually copy the painting?

Might seem like a daft question but it really puzzled me and my friends last night over a few bottles of wine!

[jno]

yes, copying paintings by painting another one was quite common. Art students would often do this to teach themselves the techniques of the masters. Or prints might be made by etching; this would involve someone - possibly the original artist, possibly a plagiarist - doing a black and white copy of the painting to be reproduced by the etching process.

But most prints you buy today will derive from photos of the original work.

[Famous5]

Artists also used a system called pouncing, where they took tracings of the original picture and then placed tiny pinpricks along the trace lines. They then shook fine carbon (eg soot) over the tracing paper and pushed the soot through the pinpricks onto the new canvas. They then got an outline which they used as guidelines for filling in with paint.

[lizw]

Many thanks for your replies - I had no idea!