Woodblock Printing

Woodblock printing is a technique for relief printing, otherwise known as “xylography”, that actually originated in places like China and other areas of Asia and in Egypt (although the stamping technique had been around for a while and in other places).  It started out as a way to print on textiles and other surfaces but now is also used as prints on paper as it spread to places like Europe and beyond.  It is a beautiful craft with many different varieties and qualities, depending on the artist, their origin and time of work. 

The basic idea of woodblock printing is to cut out the design from a block of wood using a knife, chisel, or sandpaper to remove the parts of the wood that will be white.  It is preferable to cut with the grain of the wood and it is one technique that is difficult to fix once an error is made (although with digital mediums that shouldn’t be a problem).  It is often monochromatic (as that is easiest when printing) but can also be in multiple colors if more than one woodblock is carved and printed on top of the previous print.  New colors can even be created by overlapping the prints.  The printing can be done a few different ways, like with simple stamping the block onto paper or textiles, rubbing (used mostly in Asia) the paper or cloth as it sits on the block, or in later times with a printing press.

Anna Pulvermakher is one of the artists that uses mostly the stamp technique.  Her art looks a little rough sometimes, but I think she has a unique and beautiful style in many of her works, especially the monochromatic ones.

Vicki Bailey also uses the stamp technique and with a bit more complexity and detail.  The bird especially is well designed in my opinion.

It is said that the greatest height and quality woodblock art came from artists of the Edo period in Japan where the culture encouraged much contemplation, study, and precision.  Many western woodcuts are beautiful though somewhat rough looking  while these prints from that era (and still many from this one) are so carefully made they’re hardly recognizable as having been printed out of a wooden medium, and most are full color.  The most famous of these are done in the Ukiyo-e type technique, which involved a master artist and many assistants and involved the master making a master drawing which was pasted to different woodblocks and each block had the planned white carved out to leave a relief block for each color.  Sometimes a color block would be printed more than once to achieve the right depth of color and fine quality. 

Toshi Yoshida, born in Tokyo in the 1920’s is one of the more modern Japanese artists that keeps alive much of the the Ukiyo-e technique.  He’s traveled to many other places too, and his work is absolutely stunning.  He specializes in the naturalistic style though for a long time he changed to an abstract, nonrepresentational one before changing back again.