Woodcut
Woodcuts are the earliest printing techniques devised by artists. A woodcut is carried out on planks of soft woods such as apple, pear, cherry, sycamore and beech, sawn along the grain, known as side grain, the same is used in linocuts but not in wood engravings which use the end grain.
The block is carved so that an image stands out in relief. The tool used is a knife (with a flat steel blade trimmed at the end to an angle to create its cutting edge and bevelled on one side only along the cutting edge) or a variety of V-shaped chiselling gouges. The image is then inked and paper placed against its surface before being run through a press. It is possible to make a woodcut without a press (Japanese Ukiyo-e prints for example) by placing the inked block against a sheet of paper and applying pressure by hand.
In old master woodcuts the artist generally only drew his design onto the block, but left the cutting to a professional “form cutter” who cut away the unnecessary surface to leave the lines of the artist’s design standing proud. This resulted in a “black line” woodcut, that is the printed design appeared as black lines on the “white” ground of the paper.
The block is carved so that an image stands out in relief. The tool used is a knife (with a flat steel blade trimmed at the end to an angle to create its cutting edge and bevelled on one side only along the cutting edge) or a variety of V-shaped chiselling gouges. The image is then inked and paper placed against its surface before being run through a press. It is possible to make a woodcut without a press (Japanese Ukiyo-e prints for example) by placing the inked block against a sheet of paper and applying pressure by hand.
In old master woodcuts the artist generally only drew his design onto the block, but left the cutting to a professional “form cutter” who cut away the unnecessary surface to leave the lines of the artist’s design standing proud. This resulted in a “black line” woodcut, that is the printed design appeared as black lines on the “white” ground of the paper.
