About Woodcuts

Woodcut is a form of relief printmaking where a printing plate is carved from a smooth board. The plate is sometimes called a block, and this printing form is sometimes called block printing. Everything that will not be printed is carved away. The ink is carried on the raised surface of the plate – the part that is left.

To print the image, the surface of the carved plate, or block, is inked, paper is placed on top, and pressure is applied by hand or by press to transfer the ink from wood to paper.

Multicolored prints can be made by carving a separate block for each color (multi-block printing), or by using one block and successively carving more of the block away for each color printed (reduction printing). These methods can be combined and/or multiple colors can be applied to one or more blocks. Another way to color a print is by hand with another medium, like watercolor, after printing.

Using one or more of these methods, many layers of color can be applied to a sheet of paper, and multiple sheets can be printed with the same image. The prints are very similar, but each is original, made by hand. In this way an edition of original prints differs from an edition of copies made by giclée printing or offset lithography.

An edition of original prints includes all of the nearly identical prints made of that image. Editions vary in size. In a limited edition, each print is signed and numbered by hand. The print's number appears in the form of a fraction with the individual print's number in the numerator and the total number of prints in the edition in the denominator. (As in 15/21) An open edition has no limit, and is not likely to be numbered.
block single print print in progress











all images © Beckie Prange