Woodblock Carving
Woodblock printing
This is also known as woodcut printing this is a technique for printing text images or
patterns on paper or cloth a method dating from antiquity.
Here prepared flat wooden blocks are marked out with images and or text and then carved to the pattern
in preparation for printing. The blocks are relief carved which means that the part that is sticking proud receives the ink and gets to be printed onto the material. The non printed araes of the wood block pattern are carved away
The carving of blocks from the past have shown very finely carved with finely detail by the master carvers.
Manufacture for one color
The technique is basically the same as wood chip carving both emulating engraving as for
on a flat surface. The resulting block is inked and then printed onto the receiving surface using pressure.
For repeating patterning , the block is re-positioned over and over and printed accordingly.
Multicolored printing
For this technique of producing say a 4 color print , 4 blocks have to be prepared and carved ready for printing. These will each be carved in relief for that color that needs to be printed for that block.
These blocks are identical in size so than they can be accurately lined up in a master frame.
They then are able to be dropped into a holding frame of the same inner dimension as the "color" blocks.
The whole trick to this technique is in the carving preparation, by separating out the colors to be printed so that each color component ends up being printed in the correct position so the image is built up by each layering of the color to be printed.
The other trick to this carving of the wood is in the preparation of the indexing frame for the
wood carved blocks so that the blocks can be loaded and later removed smoothly, and also be positioned correctly for printing. Simple almost privative but works well.
