Start with a drawing. Hey, nice kicks dancin' fools. What's that under yer feets? Wooden support? Yalsa. Well alrighty, let's get this wood block printing process underway. Wood block printing is one of the four forms of printing. It's one of the simplest and goes way back.
Does Albrecht Dürer ring a bell? He made woodblock prints around the 1490s.
Well, this ain't Dürer. It's not wood carved on its end. We're lino-cutting. That's short for linoleum. Yep, the stuff you find underfoot in the kitchen. You may dance in the kitchen too.
The linoleum is much easier to carve than the wood. It's applied to a wooden block, though. I actually prefer wood block printing. But that's another post (ha). So here we are with our carving tool on the left -- aka a linoleum cutter and the aforementioned lino-block. Once you have drawn your soon-to-be printed image, you reverse it, and draw it onto the block. It's a complicated process that involves elves. And they were not cleared by the union for this post. But believe me, elves are involved. And they are unionized.
Carve!
Almost done with the carving. This is not your utmost fine art wood block print. Many master printers will make periodic prints throughout the carving process to make sure the block is shaping into the image they want. As a matter of fact carving it all at once is kinda looked down upon. Why? Because block printing like other forms of fine art is about the process. Speaking of which check out the next step.
Ink yer block with an ink roller aka brayer. This is my favorite part of the process. You warm up the ink, roll it out on a plate and ink up yer roller. Then the roller transfers the ink to the block -- onto all the high spots on the block. The low places that have been carved do not pick up ink. Well, they do iffin' you got too much ink on yer roller. That happens.
Say hello to Mr. Spoon. He is the baren for the project. The baren is a tool that presses the paper onto the ink. There are presses and all sorts of hand held tools that do this. I use a spoon. Place your paper, place your inked block, and rub with your spoon on the back of the paper. Did you know there is a front side and a back side to the paper?
Here's the first print. It is not usable, for the block has not been seasoned. Once again, a lino-block doesn't quite match the nuances a wood block has. With more stout materials and a wood block, the block needs to get prepped for printing. You do that by, well, printing. Let's just say we are introducing the ink to the linoleum and are making sure they're pals before we start pulling prints. We're also checking the block to make sure we've got the image 'just so'.
Once the block is ready, you run your prints. It is a time intensive task by hand. And not every print is usable. It is during this time you think up great comeback phrases for those who have no idea what you are doing, why you are doing it, and why someone would be crazy enough to hand pull prints when we all know a xerox or giclée does the same thing much faster.
Quality verses quantity. Fine art verses facsimile. Living verses existing. Dancing verses standing.
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