Painting

Printing is a process of decorating textile fabrics by application of pigments, dyes, or other related materials in the form of patterns. Although apparently developed from the hand painting of fabrics, such methods are also of great antiquity. There is evidence of printing being carried out in India during the 4th century BCE, and a printing block dated at about 300 CE has been unearthed in the burial grounds of Akhmīn in Upper Egypt. Pre-Columbian printed textiles have been found in Peru and Mexico. Textile printing has become highly sophisticated and has involved the skills of many artists and designers.

The four main methods of textile printing are block printing, roller printing, screen printing and thermal transfer printing. These methods usually apply color in the form of a thickened paste, then fix the color usually by cooking or heating, and then remove the excess color by washing. Printing styles are divided into direct printing, row printing or resist paper printing. In direct printing, the colored paste is printed directly on the cloth. In order to perform ink discharge printing, the fabric is dyed with a background color first, and then the reagent or reducing agent coated in the printing paste is destroyed. This operation may cause the discharged pattern to remain white on the colored background, and the printing paste may also contain color materials that have not been damaged by the discharge agent, thereby forming a colored pattern. In the resist process, the cloth is first printed with a substance called resist to protect these printed areas from the effects of color. When the cloth is dyed or filled with paint, only those parts that are not printed with resist are dyed. A special application of this technology is to give fabrics a soft effect, that is, a layer of resist is printed on the fabric and then treated with caustic soda.