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Relief printing techniques were, it seems, first used by ancient Egyptians to print on fabrics. A piece of wood was carved with a sharp knife or a gouge and the areas left untouched were then inked and pressed to the fabric. To get more than one color, different pieces of carved wood were needed, each one representing a different pattern.
Later, Gutemberg (1400 -1468) realized that one could leave letters untouched instead of decorative patterns and then, putting different letters together to make words and sentences, print books using paper, a new discovery of this time.
The letter a and the dots have been left untouched; all the material around them has been cut. The block has been inked and a sheet of paper put on it. One has
applied some pressure on it and then the paper has been lifted from the block. The image is printed like in a mirror.
In 1498, Dürer (1471 - 1528) published a series of woodcut, the illustrations of the Apocalypse, that stays as the first great example of use of this technique in the Art. Many after him follow his example and nearly if not all the illustrations put in newspapers until the middle of the
20th century were made using some sort of relief printing techniques.
During the
20th century, Munch, the Expressionists and Picasso were among a great variety of European artists that explored and expanded the possibilities of these techniques.
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Woodcut, Linocut and Wood engraving are the 3 kinds of relief printing techniques. In each one, you draw your subject on the surface of a block and cut away every bit of material that is not the picture, using special instrument called gouges or knifes.
Some gouges are in V to cut fine lines, others in U to cut larger chunk of wood. Some are like a knife, but you can also use a Stanley knife, to cut precise angles or define the contour of your image.
A woodcut let see the natural grain of the wood once printed, and it is something you can play with when deciding how to draw you picture.
A linocut has less texture because of the homogenous nature of the linoleum but gives more contrast between the black and the white.
A wood engraving uses the end grain of a block of wood so the cutting is more difficult but you can have finer lines than in the two other relief printing techniques.
The surface of the blocks must be smooth if you want to be able to ink and print it entirely so if you are using a piece of wood, you will have to sand it first using different grades of sandpaper.
You can use any kind of wood, and cut with whatever you think of, even if some wood or instrument are more common. Keep in mind that the softer the material, the easier the cutting but, also, the rougher the result so if you are planning a very detailed picture with many fine lines, use a wood from a fruit tree or the end grain of a block, and allow you plenty of time because the cutting will be long.
If you want to reproduce what can be seen in reality, you will have to cut using a mirror or to use tracing paper to draw your picture on the block.
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Once you are done with your cutting, or think you are, it is time to print.. You will need a roller, some ink, a plate to spread the ink on it, a press, a wooden spoon or a
baren, and some paper.
Put some ink on the plate, spread it using a roller until it is put evenly on the surface -and on your roller-, then roll your roller many times in every direction on your block. Put a sheet of paper on your block, press it, lift slowly a corner of your paper to see if the pressure has been sufficient, if not, press again then put the paper away, your print should be done.
There are two types of ink: water based inks and oil based inks.
Water based inks are easy to use because you can clean your materials with water, and some give a result nearly as good as oil based inks once dried. They also dries quicker than an oil based ink but that can be a problem if you need a lot of time to complete your editions. If you are thinking to work with watercolor on your prints, the watercolors will dissolve the ink.
Oil based inks gives the best color once dried and you can work on your print with water once these prints are dried but everything you used will need to be cleaned with turpentine or some kind of dissolving product, and you can be sure your hands will show for a while what you have done, even if you put gloves before starting to print!
When I want to have an idea of what my print will be, I use water based ink to do a quick printing by hand. When I am sure that my cutting is what I want, I use either a better quality water based ink or and oil based ink for the final prints.
You can use any kind of paper to print on it, depending of the effect you want your print to have, but, again, if you plan to work with watercolor after, you should use a strong paper that will not wrinkle.
You can print using a flatbed cylinder press like the ones used before for printing newspaper or posters , a press made especially for block printing or by hand, using a baren or a wooden spoon of the kind you would use to cook.
With a flatbed cylinder press, your block must be thick enough to be reached by the cylinder, but not too thick because you will not be able to roll the cylinder on it. You must first fix your block on the plate, using small pieces of wood, for example, and making sure your image is centered so it will be print in the middle of the paper you are using. Your print will be evenly colored because the pressure is the same everywhere. It is mainly the same precautions that must be respected with other press.
By hand, the pressure will be different from one place to another and it will show on your print. Using a baren or a wooden spoon, you must rub on the back of your paper until you are satisfied with the result. To see how things are going, you can lift a corner of your paper, then another, making sure that this paper will not slip, and rub again on it with more pressure if you think there is not enough ink.
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If you want to do a color print, of course you can use watercolor or pencil color or whatever you think of and work on your prints once they are dried but to print with different colors, you will have to do as many blocks as you want different colors.
First, do the main block, the one with the shapes, the one that generally will be printed in black, then print it on a tracing paper. Then put the tracing paper on a block of the same size of your first block, and press the inked picture on its surface: you will have a second block with the same picture as the one on your first block. Once the ink has dried, you can define wich part of this picture will get the second color, and cut everything else. For a third color, do the same on a third block, and so on.
When you want to print these blocks, you have first to define exactly where they will be put under the press, and find a means to fix your sheet of paper so you can lift it without moving it. On a flatbed cylinder press, it can be easily done because some clips are there to do that job, but with another press or by hand, I would not recommend to try to print with different colors on the same sheet of paper because it is too difficult to fix the blocks and the paper.
Once you know where blocks and paper will go, you start to print one color, lift the paper, replace your first block with the second one inked with another color, press it, lift the paper, and so on until you are done with the different colors. Then you put another sheet of paper and do your second print the same way. As it takes time to go from one color to the others, and one sheet of paper to the next one, it is better to use oil based inks that will not dried on your blocks between two uses, and it is also
recommended that you start with the lighter colors.
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Because you have to do a lot of thing by hand to get your prints, each print is different from the other. Furthermore, each new print you make is generally darker or with more lines than the one before it because the block got more ink. To acknowledge this specificity, each print is numbered and considered as an original.
The first number is the place of the print, the second is the total of prints made: 3/6 means print #3 on a total of 6.
You are supposed to destroy your block once all the prints are made to insure any buyer that there will not be additional prints later, and to make a print of this destroyed block to show that you will not be able to make more prints, but I do not know of any printer doing that because it also means destroying your work. Most, I guess, keep their block and if the first edition is sold out, or if they see a new way to use this block, they alter the first image and do a second edition with is also an original because something is different from the first one.
Beside these numbered prints, 10% more of the total edition can be print and will be called EA..
(Exemplaire d'Artiste, or Artist Proof)
The first prints you made to see how was your cutting can be kept and called
E.E. (Examplaire d'Essais, or First Try ) but I generally do not keep them because there are not what I wanted to do and the paper I printed on is not a good one.
All prints must be signed and dated, and they are also generally named. There are different way of putting all those information below the print but none is said to be better than the other, it is mainly a question of how you want the result to look like.
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