Types of Relief Printing

Series Summary

Relief printing, also known as block printing, is a printing process in which ink is transfered to the printing surface from raised portions of the printing block. Wood block printing as well as letterpress and flexography are examples of this process. This process is the opposite of engraving or etching, where the areas which print are those below the block surface. The rubber stamp is a good example of relief printing. Up until the computer printing age, books and other documents containing text were printed with movable type, also a relief printing technique.

In this free relief printing lesson, a printing instructor tells you how to create your own wood or linoleum block for relief printing. He discusses how to choose and transfer a design from a photograph to a wood block. Learn advice on how to carve the wood block to get the best likeness of your photo. You will also learn which papers and inks are best for relief printing. Watch this series and create your own printmaking art!

Video Transcript

"There are many different types of print making, but the easiest type of print making that an average can use is block printing. There's two forms of block printing, generally, that artists use. One is using wood and the other is using linoleum. Today we will be discussing how to create your own block print using either one of these and/or both. So there's three types of print making that are generally found. One is relief, one is intaglio and one is plain and graphic. Where the ink is held on the surface determines the type of printmaking. Today we're dealing with relief printmaking, where we take a piece of wood or a piece of linoleum and we carve marks into the surface and we apply ink to the very top surface and then place the paper on top of the block on top of that ink, releasing the ink onto the paper. All of these processes require a block, a plate, or a stone and all of them reverse the image as you can see right here. In terms of art, a relief is generally a three dimensional surface where it's been carved and in this case the wood has been taken away and where we take away that wood it will not hold ink. So all of the areas that we leave behind will be the areas that the ink will show up on the paper."