Creating Relief Printing Proof Print

Video Transcript

"Now we're going to go through the steps involved printing our block. Making sure that we move away from the slab, we don't want any extra ink on our paper. What we need to do is line our paper up to the block, and this is relatively easy. Placing one edge, we can say that this is about the halfway point here. Again, the smooth side is the side that we want to print on. So there's a halfway point, and here's a halfway point. And I've made these references, and just gently set the paper down. Once I've set the paper down on the block, I never want to let go. So, I always want to have one hand on the surface at all times, because we don't want this to move. Then, taking a wooden spoon, working much like we did with the brayer across the surface, starting at one corner and working our way around, and rubbing over the surface of the paper, applying equal pressure and not a whole lot of force, to rip the surface of the paper, but enough that you can actually see the ink coming off the block through the paper itself. And again, I'm working left to right, making sure I go over the entire surface, and never letting go. Applying equal pressure the best I can. You may also want to go to the edges and define those edges, so you can see the entire wood block. And then continue across the surface. If your arm is getting tired, you're doing this right. I'm almost through with the whole surface. I essentially never let go, and I've always kept the spoon moving across the surface of the paper. I can actually see my image, as well. So, once I have the whole thing printed, what I like to do is go ahead and rotate it, and then double back, by going all the way over the whole surface a little bit faster than I did before. This will guarantee a nice, even print. So now we're ready to remove the paper. Very carefully, lifting the paper, preferably grabbing two corners to not drag it across the surface, we then lift it off. And here we have our proof. We can see the surface of the wood. We can see those curvy, linear lines. We can also see the hatching and the other marks that we've made on the surface with the screwdriver."