THE JOYS OF WOOD CUT

Wood cuts are a great way to create strong dynamic images in print. It was of the core print making techniques we covered on our Carmarthen program. The process calls for bold work. You can make your wood block anywhere including out on location. When we got to print from our finish wood blocks we would relief ink and a transparent medium.

It is vital to plan the drawing before ‘cutting’, and making sure everything works design-wise.

Our group had nine panels, one each. We employed graphic device of a river as the ‘red thread’ on each panel 49 x 69 cm we would once each panel is fully ‘carved’ out, lay all nine end to end and take a print across two days

A highly focused activity and great to do as a group you can chat and still stay focused on job in hand and at the end of a session feel fully satisfied. Looking forward to finalisation and print making.

WOOD CUTS HISTORY: First used to decorate textiles China 5C.  Woodblock printing on paper in Europe 14C. Took off with the development of moveable type. The master was Albrecht Dürer with black-line woodcut his near perfect images. Wood engraving with is sophisticated output grabbed the headlines 17 – 18C.

The expressionistic potential of wood cuts was discovered by Edvard Munch and Paul Gauguin. In the 20C and the German Expressionists, stimulated by the vitality of medieval woodcuts, themselves gouged and roughly fashioned the wood to achieve a dynamic effect. Huge contribution to Japanese art – woodcuts satisfied the demand for ukiyo-e, (Japanese: “pictures of the floating world”) one of the most important genres of art of the Tokugawa period (1603–1867) in Japan.

 Source: Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “woodcut”. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2 Nov. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/art/woodcut


Category: Art Practise