Printmakers use color to their prints in several options. Frequently color in printmaking which involves etching, screen printing, woodcut, or linocut will be implemented by making use of individual plates, chunks or screens or by using a reductionist technique. In multiple plate color techniques, a number of plates, screens or blocks are made, each one giving a distinct color. Every separate plate, screen, or block will be inked up in a unique color and implemented in a specific sequence to be able to produce the entire picture. Normally about 3 to 4 plates will be produced, but there are instances in which a printmaker may use as many as seven plates. Each application of a different plate of color will interact with the color already put on the paper, and this has to be remembered while creating the separation of colors. The lightest colors are often implemented first, and then darker colors successively prior to the darkest.

The reductionist approach to making color is to start with a lino or wood block that is either empty or with a basic etching. Upon every printing of color, the printmaker will then further cut into the lino or woodblock removing more material and then implement another color and reprint. Every single successive removal of lino or wood from the block will expose the already printed color to the observer of the print. Picasso is commonly cited as the developer of reduction printmaking, though there is proof of this technique being used twenty-five years before Picasso’s linocuts.

Valenti Angelo was an Italian-American printmaker, illustrator and author, born June 23, 1897 in Massarosa, Italy. He immigrated to the United States together with his family in 1905, residing initially in Ny and then moving in Antioch, California. At the age of 19, Angelo transferred to San Francisco, doing work by day as a labourer and spending his night time as well as weekends at libraries as well as galleries and museums. He quickly became a versatile artisan and an especially skilled engraver and printer.

Angelo’s favoured medium was the linocut, and his prints depicting urban nocturnes as well as desert scenes of the American Southwest are notably sought after by collectors and dealers. In 1926, Angelo made his first book illustrations for the well-known, San Francisco-based Grabhorn Press. In a time period of thirty-four years, Angelo decorated and illustrated roughly 250 books. Among these were folio editions of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, as well as several books of the Holy Bible.

Sybil trained in England, and started producing and exhibiting linocuts right from 1921 up until 1939, working frequently with her informal partner Cyril Edward Power. She likewise aided in the establishment and took over as the first secretary of the The Grosvenor School of Modern Art. She worked as an oxyacetylene welder in an aircraft production line in World War I, in which she assisted in the creation of the very first all metal aeroplane for the Bristol Welding Company as well as in the shipyards of the Hampshire city of Southampton during World War II where she became acquainted with Walter Morgan. In England, one of the largest collections in public ownership is held by St Edmundsbury Borough Council Heritage Service Bury St Edmunds. This collection includes a selection of early water-colour paintings, executed even though the artisan was still living in Suffolk.