Video: Preparing Wood Block for Relief Printing

When creating wood printing block, use simple images which will be easy to cut. Learn more tips for creating wood and linoleum blocks for relief printing in this free printing lesson from a printmaking instructor.

Video Transcript

Now, we need prepare our block, and there's two considerations here, the size of the block has to be cut to the size of our drawing, and the orientation of the wood grain also has to be oriented relative to our drawing. So, I'm going to orient my wood grain to be horizontal like my photographic simplified drawing. Now, that the block is cut to our size, we need to sand the block. Starting with a two twenty sandpaper working with the grain, we want to smooth out the surface so that the cutting process is easier, because the wood grain now will be very, very tight and smooth. Switch to a four hundred sandpaper. This is almost polishing the surface. Make sure you work with the grain when you sand wood. To prepare our linoleum for cutting, it has to be cut to size. The easiest way to cut linoleum, is to flip it over on the back and to cut through the burlap backing, using a ruler, I'm lining it up to one of the threads of the burlap, and then slicing through that thread along the ruler, and snapping the linoleum.

Preparing Wood Block for Relief Printing

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